Toujours Ensemble, Toujours Nous
by on rooftops
Summary: Fairytales happen when the boy and the girl decide they don't need a happy ending, they just need each other. — Lily/Teddy
1. one

**A/N: **I was going to make this a one-shot, but then I got nine pages in and realized that I probably had about twenty pages to go, and it's not as…cohesive as my last Teddy/Lily story, so I figured that I could probably break it into a multi-chaptered fic. Right now, it's looking to be about three, maybe four, chapters.  
Also, I put Lily in Gryffindor in this one, which is weird for me, and I'm not sure if I like her there…but she's there.  
(I am procrastinating on internship applications and fifteen page research papers and French translations like mad right now, you have no idea.)

I hope you enjoy, and please review!

**Disclaimer:** Je n'en ai rien.

ONE  
once upon a time,  
one princess got her fairytale ending,  
and another was forgotten.

Bright May sunlight glinted off the glass covers of the displays surrounding Teddy. He turned his eyes from a gold ring set with three stones – a diamond in the center and two rubies at the sides – to one sporting an enormous rock and a price tag that made his heart seize.

Harry kept a tight rein on his facial expression as he pretended to examine the rings in the case beside the one Teddy agonized over. He had agreed, after some urging from Ginny and Hermione, to accompany Teddy on this ring search, but even in his worst nightmares he had not expected the endeavor to last more than an hour, or to require more than three stops at the very most. Merlin knew that it hadn't taken him nearly this long to find Ginny's ring. He had caught sight of the white gold circle with a diamond at the center and ruby and emerald chips set into its band in a shop window, entered the store, made the purchase, and walked out. He hadn't requested seven different jewelry merchants to remove fifteen different rings from their cases. He hadn't shaken his head at each and every one, finding something wrong in its composition or setting or bloody _color_. As if white diamonds even came in different colors.

Teddy sighed, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, Harry, I just want this to be perfect. I've made her wait so long…I don't want to screw it up now."

Instead of simply agreeing, which he could have done if Ginny and Hermione hadn't settled themselves quite firmly into his brain with their constant analysis of everything, Harry asked, "Teddy, are you certain that you want to do this?"

Teddy glanced up, surprise spreading across his features, although he managed to keep the color of his eyes and hair a simple, unassuming, brown, "Don't you think it's time?"

"That's not what I asked," Harry ran a hand through his messy hair, revealing the old lightning bolt scar for a fraction of a second, "Are you sure you want to get married?"

Teddy closed his eyes, "If I don't propose soon, Victoire will get tired of waiting for me. She is, as she has been fond of reminding me lately, twenty-five. Which is apparently ancient in girl years, or something."

Harry signed, "But if you don't want to get married yet, Ted, she should understand that."

The younger man shook his head, "What she doesn't understand is how we've been dating for eight years and _haven't_ gotten married yet. She thinks that if I'm not ready to commit now, then I never will be, and if I never will be, then she doesn't want to waste her time on me." Teddy shrugged, "It's not like it's so unusual not to get married these days. Plenty of people are together for their entire lives without getting hitched." Teddy fell silent for a moment, "Although I'm fairly certain that Victoire's parents and grandparents wouldn't be very pleased with that prospect."

Harry grinned, "No, I don't believe they would. But Teddy, if you don't want to marry her, doesn't that mean that you don't want to be with her?"

"I never said I didn't want to marry her," Teddy pointed out. "I just said I wasn't sure about getting married _now_. But…" he hesitated, "Harry, I think that what I'm about to say will make you think I'm a bad person, so just remember that I'm not, all right?"

His godfather shook his head, "Theodore Lupin, I could never think of you as a bad person."

Teddy smiled gratefully, "Right, so, by proposing, I think I can buy some time. Not a lot, you see, but enough so that I'm ready when the wedding does happen. This way, I can promise a future to her and make her feel as if we're moving forward – which we _are_ – just not necessarily as quickly as she'd like."

Harry bit back a smile, "I think you'd be surprised at how many men get engaged for that very reason. But just be sure, Ted, before you ask her, that you are positive that you do want to marry her sometime soon. Because if not, it would be better to break up with her now, rather than later."

"I'm sure," Teddy turned his attention back to the rings in front of him. "I like that one." He pointed to a twisted gold band sporting a medium-sized diamond and two sapphires on either side. Harry let out a sigh of relief as Teddy placed an order for the proper size and they left the jeweler's, both more than ready for drinks at the Leaky Cauldron.

Teddy later admitted that he chose a poor evening to propose to Victoire, but it had seemed right, at the time. The June night air smelled like honeysuckle and heather and the moon glowed so brightly that every street lamp and metal gate appeared glazed in silver. Teddy had a bottle of expensive champagne, two crystal wine glasses, a very beautiful engagement ring, and a well-practiced heart-quickening speech rolling around on the tip of his tongue.

Of course, when the moment came, the perfection of his speech didn't matter. Which was good, because he stumbled over the all-important question. He got through the "I love you"s and the "I want to spend every morning and night and every second in between with you"s no problem, but when it came to actually asking, "Victoire, will you be my wife?" his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he ended up forcing out, "Vic, d'you want to marry me?"

But he probably could have just mumbled the word "marry" and she would have reacted in the same way. She would have squealed and thrown her arms around him in absolute joy, knocking over her champagne and squishing the black velvet ring box against his body.

"Finally," she breathed as she kissed him.

So all that went well, if not perfectly. But Teddy had misjudged Victoire's excitement over getting some form of commitment out of him; her joy lasted well into the next day, which had long ago been reserved for a Potter-Weasley family gathering.

They Flooed into the Burrow to find a sign strung across the kitchen exclaiming: "Congratulations Hugo and Lily!" with two gold and red roaring lions racing around the edges. The whole thing was rather overwhelming, and Lily, who stood at the stove when Teddy and Victoire tumbled through the fireplace, laughed at the expressions on their faces when they caught sight of it.

"I know, it's awful. But Hugo's girlfriend made it and she'd be hurt if we didn't put it up," Lily explained as she greeted her cousin and Teddy with hugs. "Everyone's out back, if you guys want to join them."

"You go ahead, Vic, I'll be out in a minute," Teddy said, and Victoire kissed him lightly on the cheek before ruffling Lily's already messy red hair and slipping out the screen door.

"So how's it feel, kid?" Teddy asked, leaning against the counter and grabbing an apple from the bowl on the sideboard.

Lily had returned to the stove, and she directed her wand at the pot of potatoes as she replied, "Strange. I never really thought this day would come, you know? I expected to spend my whole life at Hogwarts, and I wasn't really too torn up about that idea. Leaving, though…it feels odd." She wiped the back of her hand beneath her eyes, catching some of the wetness that overflowed her lashes. She forced a smile to her lips, "I guess it'd be easier if I was certain about what comes next."

Teddy wrapped his arm around Lily's shoulders and squeezed her gently in a one-armed hug. She repressed the electric shiver that his touch sent through her veins and leaned her head against his shoulder, breathing in his familiar scent. "Everyone feels scared when they leave school, Lil. But you're talented and smart and strong, I'm sure you'll find your way soon."

She shrugged, "I've gotten job offers from Potion brewing and Charm invention organizations in London, Paris, and the States, but I'm not sure what I want to do yet."

"And _you're_ worried? Merlin, Lil, most people leave Hogwarts without an idea of what they're going to do. You're lucky." He hesitated, "But you wouldn't leave the UK, would you?"

She sighed, "That's the question. The London job involves more the association of Potions and Charms with Dark Magic – I'd have to go through Auror training, and I'm not too keen on that type of study. I'm thinking I might go to Paris."

Teddy stiffened. He couldn't imagine Lily as far away as France, although it was considerably better than the States. "Just make sure the decision is the right one for you," Teddy murmured against her hair, dropping a kiss on the top of her messy scarlet head.

"No worries there, Ted." Lily pulled away from him and removed the potatoes from the stove. "Want to go let everyone know it's time to eat?"

He glanced at her, "Why're you cooking today, anyway? Isn't it supposed to be 'your special day' and all that?"

She laughed, "I'd rather cook than have everyone congratulating me all day. Like it's so difficult to graduate from Hogwarts."

"Some people would say it is," Teddy grinned as Lily rolled her eyes. "All right, all right, I'll go make the announcement. But really, Lil, you should try and spend some time with the family today. They did come out here to see you, after all."

"And Hugo," Lily pointed out. "Go on, Ted, stop trying to manage my life." She spoke with a grin, but Teddy could tell from the way she had lowered her right eyebrow that she was partially serious.

"Right, you're all grown up and responsible now." He broke the gravity of his statement with a laugh and banged out the screen door, calling to gather the family into the expanded dining room.

The day was supposed to be about Lily and Hugo, and although Lily usually disliked being the center of attention, she found herself enjoying the dinnertime conversation. Everyone who had been at Hogwarts with the two youngest cousins began rehashing their experiences, and while some memories made Lily's skin burn bright red under her freckles, they all spurred on minutes of laughter.

Hugo had just reappeared from beneath the table, where he had ducked when James began telling a particularly mortifying story about the first time Hugo had come off of reserve and played Seeker in a Quidditch match, when Victoire interrupted the continuous flow of joking nostalgia.

"I'm sorry, can I have the floor for a moment?" She stood, her pale right hand draped possessively over Teddy's shoulder, squeezing rosy pink nails into his tee-shirt for a fraction of a second.

James caught his breath and waved his hand, "Go on, Vic. I'm sure Lily will thank you, I had one of her rather disastrous experiences saved up to tell you all."

"Vicky," Teddy muttered, so low that he clearly hadn't intended anyone but Vic to hear.

"No, Ted, I can't wait any longer." Victoire turned her smile to the faces lining the long table, "Teddy asked me last night – we're getting married!" She held up her left hand, and Lily felt as if the light that glittered off the diamond cut straight through her chest.

She bit her lip, hard, and added her faint voice to the chorus of "Congratulations" echoing from her end of the table, watching as her uncles and her father stood to shake Teddy's hand, and her mother and aunts hurried to embrace the couple – all looking horribly unsurprised.

To be honest, no one looked particularly surprised. This was one of those things that had been a long time coming, and everyone had expected it ages ago. Lily herself had self-destructively placed a bet with James, Al, Rose and Scorpius on the exact date – and she realized with horror-tinged amusement that she had won that wager when all four of them rose and tossed coins to the table in front of her.

"I think you deserve more congratulations than them," Al told Lily softly as he handed her his five galleons, "You're getting more out of their engagement than they are."

"Al," Rose hissed, "Honestly, they're getting_ married_. Nothing beats that!" Scorpius shot a terrified look at Rose, who just tossed her curly red hair over her shoulder and moved to hug Victoire.

"You don't think she's getting any ideas, do you?" Scorpius whispered as he added his rather large contribution to Lily's winnings.

"Honestly, Scor, girls always have ideas about marriage," Lily informed him, forcing a smile to her lips as she collected the money from the table in two freckled hands. "I need to go put this somewhere that the others won't find it."

Scorpius narrowed his gray eyes at her – for a Ravenclaw he had a surprising level of human intuition, "Are you all right, Lily?" His voice was soft enough that no one should have heard it, but Lily could feel Teddy's eyes jerk to her back at Scorpius's question.

"Yeah," Lily kept the smile on her face with effort – dammit, she was no good at hiding her emotions, "It's just…Hogwarts is over, you know?"

Scorpius nodded, his eyes not leaving her face, "Sure, but…are you certain that's all that's wrong?"

Rose appeared at her boyfriend's side, her hand tugging at his, "Come on, Scor, the boys want to play a game of Quidditch before it gets dark out. Coming, Lil?" she called over her shoulder, and she didn't seem surprised when her cousin shook her head.

"I'll be out in a few minutes." Lily carried the coins awkwardly upstairs to Uncle Percy's old room, which she and her brothers now shared whenever they visited their grandparents. She grabbed her bag from the bed where she had tossed it earlier and poured the jangling coins in.

"Lily?" Hugo and his girlfriend, Fee Thomas, appeared silently in the doorway, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, of course," Lily whirled to face them, a smile already stretched across her face. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You didn't gloat," Fee pointed out. "You always gloat when you win something."

"And you won a shitload," Hugo added.

"Well, we've all got to grow up sometime," Lily said, tugging her red hair back into a ponytail and securing it with a rubber band. "You guys ready to play some Quidditch?"

She didn't notice the worried look that Fee and Hugo exchanged as they followed her out of the room – if she had, she would have tried harder to convince them that she was okay.

Lily managed to block out the pain that irrational, unrequited love had caused and allowed the inspiring, infallible joy of flying to take her away, and she, Rose, Roxy and Lucy completely trashed the boys in the first game. But then Teddy had to go and join the next one, and she couldn't keep her eyes on the Quaffle with him hovering at the opposite end of the field, guarding that goal. His hair shifted between a vibrant blue and his usual brown and his tee kept blowing up in the wind, affording Lily an occasional glance at the faint six-pack that had featured prominently in her favorite, most heart-wrenching dreams for the last three years. She couldn't keep her focus on the Quaffle that kept barreling by her.

She landed after that game and shrugged off the defeat, "Two days out of school and I've apparently lost my Quidditch touch. Good thing I didn't want to follow in your footsteps, Jamie."

She could feel Rose and Scorpius's eyes tracking her as she brought her broom to the shed at the back of the garden and returned to watch the Quidditch match. It would have been too strange if she had locked herself in her room or Flooed home, the way she wanted to. Lily wanted, _needed_, her family to be in the dark about her feelings for Teddy, she couldn't even imagine how they would react if they knew how she woke in the middle of the night, shaking with longing from a dream in which she and Teddy lay curled around each other, blanketed in lust (and love).

So she sat next to her mother and father and cheered on her cousins and brothers until it got too dark to see the balls and they all landed, exhausted, finally ready to go home. Lily hurried upstairs to grab her bag, then went down to say goodbye to everyone, and almost got out of there without incident. She would have, if Scorpius and Rose hadn't grabbed her by the hands as she was about to apparate and dragged her out into the darkness.

" Lily." Rose began.

"Yes, Rose?" Lily glanced from Rose's pale outline to Scorpius's, "What's up?"

"We've asked you this already, but we just want to make sure you're really all right."

Lily took a deep breath and held it, forcing herself to meet their shadowed gazes, "I'm good. Why does everyone think something's wrong?"

"Because you're shit at lying," Scorpius answered.

"And you're never as quiet as you've been today," Rose supplied.

"And that was the worst I've ever seen you play at Quidditch. Even worse than that time that you got really drunk at a Gryffindor party and organized a midnight match." Scorpius added, and Lily was grateful that the darkness covered up her blush.

"Is it Teddy, Lil?" Rose asked.

"What do you mean?" Lily tugged at the hem of her red shirt.

Scorpius sighed, "We mean, are you in love with Teddy?"

His voice was soft, and the noise from inside the house ensured that no one would overhear their conversation, but Lily couldn't help but glance over Scorpius's shoulder toward the light spilling from the screen door. No one stood anywhere near it.

She looked from Rose to Scorpius and tried to lie, "That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in ages. He's eleven years older than me, and obviously perfect for Vic and – "

"He's been your best friend since you were born," Rose interrupted. "That's all that matters, right?"

Lily closed her eyes, "Merlin, you don't know how hard I've tried…"

"It'll be all right." Scorpius promised; Rose had thrown her arms around her cousin, and he awkwardly reached over to smooth Lily's red hair away from her flushed face.

"How do you know?" She asked, pulling away from Rose and turning her back on the house, "What if I never move on?"

Rose sighed, "Eventually it won't hurt as much, I'm sure of it."

"And until then?" Lily turned to look at them. They had had to fight against family prejudices, but to Lily their love, their relationship, seemed easy. Pure. Simple.

"Until then…" Scorpius looked at her, "What do you want to do, Lily?"

"Aside from him," Rose added with a small sad smile.

"Get away." Lily looked up at the stars, catching sight of the three stars of Orion's belt, "Be happy. Do something."

"So accept one of the jobs that people seem to be throwing at you. Go off and do something for yourself, not for anyone else," Scorpius suggested, wrapping an arm around Rose's shoulders.

Rose bit back the protest that had risen in her throat – she didn't want Lily to leave, but Scorpius's suggestion made sense. "We'll miss you, but maybe it'd be best."

Lily broke her eyes away from the dazzling stars and smiled at the two of them, "You're probably right. But can you guys please not tell anyone about this? It's…not something I really want anyone to know."

"Of course," Scorpius nodded, squeezing Rose's shoulders sharply so that she added "No worries, Lily. It's a secret, we promise."

What was not a secret, at least among the Potters and Weasleys, was that Lily had accepted the Charm invention position in the States. Over the next week, everyone, including her Uncle Charlie, whom she hadn't seen for several months, Flooed into the Potter's cottage and tried to convince her to stay.

"Honestly, Lil, I don't get it," James complained, late on the night before her departure. He lay on the floor of her room, tossing a rolled up pair of bright blue tights into the air and catching them absentmindedly. Al perched on Lily's stripped mattress, watching as his sister flicked her wand around the room, directing piles of folded clothes into a trunk and high-heeled pumps and sling-backs into a box.

"What don't you get?" Lily asked, snatching a tattered school robe out of the air and chucking it into a pile in the corner.

"Why you're leaving," Albus answered. "Why not work in London? You'll be closer to the family that way."

"Or at the very least, why not Paris? Then you could visit Aunt Fleur's family whenever you're homesick and you'd see Uncle Bill and Vic and Dom and Louis pretty often."

"Because the departments in both London and Paris offered me jobs that I'm not particularly interested in." Lily tried not to think about how awkward it would be to see Victoire on a regular basis, without the rest of the family around to tamper her jealousy.

"Oh, come on." Albus groaned, "You're Lily bloody Potter, for Merlin's sake. If you want a particular job, you just walk up to your boss, tell her what you want to do, and she'll let you do it. She'd probably _create_ a bloody position out of nothing for you."

"It's possible," Lily reached for a necklace that lay tangled with a clunky charm bracelet on her bedside table. "But I don't want to get by on just my name."

"What good is it being a Potter if you don't use it? Plus," James chucked the tights against the wall and seemed disappointed when the nylon ball didn't come bouncing back toward him, "those Americans probably won't even know who Harry Potter is."

"And if they do, it won't mean as much to them. He's probably like some boring character in a history text, not a celebrity." Albus watched as Lily disentangled the swallow necklace from the charm bracelet and clasped the necklace around her neck, leaving the bracelet in a pile on the table. He reached for it.

"Again," Lily grabbed for the bracelet, but Al held it out of reach, "I want to see what it's like to be kind of normal. To not have everyone give me everything just because of who I am. Give that back, Albus."

"Didn't Teddy give these to you?" Her brother ignored her, flipping through the charms – a broomstick, a quaffle, a green and red star, a jet of sparkling flame, a tiny screech owl that flapped its wings… – one for every year Lily had been alive, plus a few Christmases.

"Yeah," Lily turned away, stooping to grab the tights from the floor.

"Aren't you going to take it with you?" Al asked, flipping over the newest one, a silver moon that looked surprisingly pretty hanging from the gold chain among a group of multicolored charms. The moon was inscribed with the words _toujours nous_…always us.

"No."

James sat up and exchanged a panicked look with Albus. "Lily," James began as Albus tried to stop staring at the words on the charm. "You're not leaving because of Teddy and Victoire, are you?"

Lily hadn't expected her brothers to pick up on this, but she had been prepared for badgering from someone in her family. After all, her mum and Aunt Hermione were forever trying to nose into her love life. So while she hadn't thought she'd be answering the boys' questions, she was prepared to answer someone's. "If anything, I considered staying because of them." The lies felt strange on her tongue, and she remained facing her wardrobe, sorting through the piles of clothes that she was leaving at home. She didn't trust herself to lie to their faces. "I mean, Teddy's my best friend, and Vic's one of our closest cousins, and I want to be here to help them get ready for the wedding. But this job was just too good an offer to pass up."

James heaved a sigh of relief, but Albus said, "What does the inscription on the moon charm mean, Lil?"

"Which one?" Lily feigned ignorance, her hands shaking. That charm had inspired a miniscule amount of hope. Teddy had given it to her that Christmas, and had told her that the silver color would change in accordance with her mood when she wore the bracelet – kind of the way his hair and eyes changed colors with his. He told her that it would always be the two of them, that they'd always have each other's backs. Like two best friends, not the way lovers do.

"The one that says _toujours nous_." James stiffened as Al's voice shifted into the lilting French tones. What the hell had Teddy been thinking?

"You speak French, Al. It means always us."

"I understand the literal meaning. What'd Teddy mean when he gave it to you?"

"That we're best friends, and that we'll never leave each other. Merlin, what'd you think he meant?" Lily whirled, her eyes flashing angrily.

"That he's in love with you." James supplied, "Which would be weird, seeing as how he's just proposed to Victoire."

"And he's eleven years older than me," Lily added. "How could we ever think about each other that way?"

Albus shrugged, "Love does crazy things to the mind. Or, anyway, that's what Mum always says."

Lily laughed self-deprecatingly, leaning down to shut her trunk, "Not that crazy."

"But you're leaving," James said. "What does that mean for Teddy?"

"I'm leaving physically. I'm still his friend." Lily turned to face her brothers, "Just like I'm still your sister. And believe me, it is good to know that you will miss me, but I am going, no matter what you say. So come hug me and then go, because I need to get some rest before tomorrow."

Al and James stood and grabbed their little sister in brief hugs, ruffling her red hair and pressing rough kisses to her temple. "You'll be good, Lil."

"Damn straight I will." She shooed them from her room and fell onto her bare mattress, reaching for the charm bracelet that Al had dropped on the striped fabric. She slipped it onto her wrist before remembering why she had stopped wearing it ages ago. The moon burned a deep, fiery red, and the words on the back shifted, although Teddy hadn't told her that the charm extended to them: _toujours amour_. Always love.

She ripped the bracelet from her wrist and chucked it toward her wardrobe, where it slid beneath the cabinet in a clatter of metal on wood. She shut her eyes, trying to think about New York City, towering skyscrapers and new opportunities. But Teddy's smile and his color changing hair and his unwavering voice kept intruding on the images of busy streets and clinical Charm labs and wild, age-appropriate, American boys.

**A/N:** If I decide to actually do work, this won't be updated for a while, but that's unlikely, so it'll probably be updated later this week at the latest.  
Thanks for reading, and hope you liked! (review?)

hugs&kisses


	2. two

**A/N:** Thank schoolwork and my dedication to procrastination for this chapter.

Dedicated to s i l v e r a u r or a, aka Ellie, because she writes Lily/Teddy stories that breathe and cry and are _real_, and because she always leaves me amazing reviews,

& to LikeAVision, because her Teddy/Lily and Scorpius/Rose stories leave me breathless and speechless and her reviews also make me feel better about my mediocre writing. Thank you, both of you.

(And I wish that I had written a better chapter. If you like, just consider this whole story written for you, because if it weren't for your beyond-beautiful Lily/Teddy stories I would have lost inspiration for this pair ages ago.)

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

TWO

one princess waited on her prince,

his shiny armor and his white horse,

while another rescued herself.

She arrived at the Ministry early the next morning. Their international Floo line was on the third floor, and Lily hoped to get in and out without attracting too much attention. Although most of the wizarding public had lost their fascination with Harry and the other war heroes, occasionally the Prophet had a slow day and its reporters decided to follow one of the "Boy who Lived" 's children around. Lily didn't want them to catch wind of her flight to the States, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she aparated into the atrium and found it empty of story-mongers. Her dad wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hurried her toward the lift, his wand keeping her luggage floating behind them.

"Now, Lil, are you certain you want to do this?" The door slid shut and Lily turned to face him, his green eyes flicking over her own.

"Positive, Daddy." Lily smiled at him, "Don't worry, I'll visit sometime soon."

Harry sighed and forced a smile to his lips, "Just don't fall in love with some American boy while you're there, Lil. He won't be good enough for you."

Lily kept a smile on her face with effort. She didn't tell her dad that that was the plan, that he would find any American boy better than the English one she had picked out. Instead, she murmured, "I have a feeling that I won't love New York enough to stay there."

Harry shrugged, "I can tell you that the whole family is hoping that you won't, but I hope that you like it enough to have fun there."

Lily laughed as the lift shuddered to a halt on the third floor and they stepped out, "Aren't you supposed to tell me that you want me to learn a lot and work hard and earn money and all that?"

Harry led Lily to the door marked "International Travel"in gold lettering. "I already know you'll do all that. You need to remember to enjoy yourself – you're too much like your Aunt Hermione, in some ways."

Lily stepped into line and handed her wand to the security wizard, who examined it for a moment before passing it back to her and beckoning her toward one of the fires that lined the wall. She turned to her father and gave him one last hug, "I'll see you soon, Dad."

Harry kissed the top of her head and pretended not to notice as she wiped tears embarrassedly from her cheeks. "Bye Lily, honey."

He stepped back and she hurried forward, grabbed a fistful of glittering green powder and called out, "International Arrivals, New York City" before walking into the fire and disappearing from his sight in a whirl of red hair and green fire.

She fell from the New York City fireplace onto a cushioned hearth a full minute later, after a dizzying array of fireplaces swirled past her eyes.

A snapping noise met her ears as she blinked and scrubbed soot from her cheeks, sitting up and getting her bearings. A teenage girl with bright pink hair and heavy blue eye-makeup leaned across a counter labeled "Arrivals". She snapped watermelon bubble gum irritably as she watched Lily stretch and struggle to her feet. "Are you Lily Potter?" "Yeah." Lily grabbed a hold of her box and trunk and dragged them across the empty room to the counter.

"Your brother is James Potter, right? Chaser for Puddlemere United? My uncle played for the Fitchburg Finches, so he's all interested in Quidditch, and he keeps trying to get us to care." She shrugged, reaching for a slip of parchment in front of her and checking a box, "Can you sign here?"

Lily reached for the quill, "But you don't like Quidditch?"

"It's all right, you know? It'd be better if the States had more teams. But I like watching your brother play." Lily was used to girls at Hogwarts fawning over her brothers, but she had never considered that James would have admirers outside that relatively small group of witches. Lily slid the parchment back across the counter, and the girl reached into a drawer and handed Lily a packet, "I'm supposed to tell you that your apartment is here," she pointed to an intersection on a map and an "x" appeared there, "And that it's a magical apartment building but that the surrounding area is not. So feel free to use your wand inside, but nowhere on the streets around it. You'll have two roommates who have both been hired in the same department that you were, and their names should be in that packet," she pointed one black fingernail at the stack of papers in Lily's hands, "And I think that's all. Unless…" she blinked innocently, "Think you could mention my name to your brother? It'd be awesome to get an owl from him, or something."

Lily laughed, imagining how James would react to the request. "I'll talk to him." She glanced at the fake-gold nametag pinned to the girl's tank-top, "Mallory. What's your last name?"

"Jeffries. Thank you, so much!" She seemed about to swallow her gum in her excitement, and just barely managed to finish her assigned statements. "All right," she gestured to the doorway, "Go out there, take a right, there'll be an elevator, take it to the first floor and go out the front entrance. Your map'll direct you from there."

"Thank you," Lily dragged her luggage behind her and followed the girl's directions, fighting against the ball of nerves that had appeared in her stomach that morning and had grown during her whirling Floo ride. She tucked her wand inside her bag and examined the map before exiting onto the crowded street. After almost getting run over by seven women dressed in pencil skirts and dangerously high heels and fifteen businessmen carrying briefcases and shouting into tiny earpieces, she found herself on the concrete steps outside of a ramshackle apartment building.

As was often the case with magical buildings, the exterior was misleading. She pressed one chipped fingernail to the intercom, and the door buzzed open, although it undoubtedly wouldn't have if she had been Muggle. She slipped inside and found herself in a lavish lobby, with a fountain bubbling at the center of a marble tiled floor and a man dressed in scarlet robes waiting to take her bags.

"Miss Potter?" His voice was flat, without the curiosity that generally accompanied her last name, and she smiled in relief – here was one person who saw her as just another witch.

She nodded and rifled through her papers, tugging out her apparation license and he nodded, waved his wand at her bags and beckoned toward the lifts.

"You're on the seventh floor. Have you looked over your roommate information yet?" Lily shook her head, wondering how she was supposed to have done that without getting run over by cars and frantic workaholics. The man smiled, "Your first time in the City? It'll get less overwhelming soon enough. The third page of your packet should have the information you'll want."

Lily laughed, "I'm used to London, you know. I thought New York would be just another city. But they're so…rushed here. Are we like that too, or is it just Muggles?"

"I'm afraid it's everyone," the man replied, "Although I wouldn't call England exactly low-key."

"But it's not like this." Lily flipped through the parchment in her hands as she spoke, and skimmed the third page. She had two roommates, just as Mallory had told her. Sage, a nineteen year old witch from Vermont and Chase, a twenty-one year old wizard from Arizona. Lily shifted uneasily. Within their apartment, she would be the youngest and the only one from outside the United States – she wondered if this would be true for the whole group of new employees. If there even _were_ any other employees.

Before she could ask the seemingly all-knowing bellhop about her job, the lift glided to a halt and chimed as the doors slid open and Lily followed the man and her luggage from the compartment into a wide, carpeted hallway. "715," the man gestured to the oak door, "It'll recognize your touch."

Lily placed her palm against the warm wood and the door sprung open on a small entranceway crowded with cardboard boxes and the figure of a black-haired man leaning over, tearing apart a package with purpose.

"Hello?" Lily's voice sounded frail to her own ears as it fell nervously from her lips, and the man didn't appear to hear her. "Hey," she repeated, louder this time, drawing herself up and trying to infuse her voice with a confidence that she certainly did not feel.

The man jerked up and whirled around, flinging an assortment of yellow-red-green-pink-tie-dyed shirts around the entranceway. "Oh, shit. Oh, hey, sorry, sorry!" He jumped out of the mess of shirts and boxes and landed awkwardly just before the doorway. "I'm Chase." He held out a tanned hand that fully enveloped Lily's. He was tall, not as tall as Teddy, but she still had to tilt her head to meet his eyes, which his longish black hair nearly obscured, and his smile revealed a slight dimple in his right cheek.

"Lily," she smiled, "You lose something already?"

He tugged at the ratty hem of his orange tee shirt and scuffed his bright green sneaker against the floor, "I know, it's awful, right? I just got here, and already I can't find my wand."

"You lost your wand?" Lily shook her head. He reminded her of Roxie – she was continually losing things, and her room at home looked like it had been washed in a multi-colored spin cycle.

"It happens more often than you'd expect," he shrugged, "but I've torn apart these boxes and I just can't find it."

Lily tugged her wand from her bag and waved it, muttering "_Accio_ Chase's wand." A slim piece of wood came zooming from somewhere further back in the apartment and landed in her outstretched palm. "Here you go."

A blush rose in the man's cheeks and he turned his face back to the mess in front of them, "Right. Well. Sorry about – "

But Lily had already spelled his belongings back into the boxes and sent them from the crowded entryway. "No worries."

He blinked at her, "You do that a lot?"

Lily laughed, "Often enough." The bellhop directed Lily's bags into the newly cleared area and smiled at her.

"Good luck, kid," he tipped his hat and swept back down the hall as Lily shut the door and turned back to her new roommate.

"So, Sage isn't here yet?" She asked, following him into the surprisingly large living room, filled with a blue couch and white recliner, a coffee table and Chase's boxes, which now covered a large section of the tan carpet and blocked the doorway to the small kitchen and dining room.

"Nope," Chase smiled down at her. "You're from England?"

"Yeah," she tucked a stray piece of red hair behind her ear and twirled her wand nervously in her left hand. "Any idea how many of us there're going to be?"

He stared at her, "Don't tell me you don't know."

"Don't know what?" Lily glanced across the room at the large fireplace that took up most of the wall. She should Floo call home to let them know she got there all right, but an owl would probably do just as well.

"You just got accepted for one of the most sought-after positions in the world. They only accept two, maybe three new employees a year. We're it."

Lily blinked. Professor McGonagall had shoved the letter offering her this job unceremoniously into her hand, along with three others at the end of first term, and had told her that she'd better decide soon.

"Oh. I guess I didn't realize just how...exclusive it was."

He stared at her, "How old are you?"

"Seventeen." She shifted uncomfortably.

His gray-blue eyes scanned her critically, "You must have really impressed them with your application. What Charm did you manipulate?"

The door banged open, and a girl's voice echoed through the apartment, "Honeys, I'm home!"

Lily breathed a sigh of relief as she stood and followed Chase into the entranceway. She was starting to get the feeling that she had been hired as a poster-child, that even this job – separated from England by an ocean – was linked to her father's legacy.

A tall girl stood smiling in the doorway, her arms outstretched as if she expected a hug. Her blond hair was tied in two ratty braids that hung past her shoulders, and her blue eyes sparkled from beneath two artful swipes of glitter eye-shadow. "Hey guys, I'm Sage."

"Hi! I'm Lily." Instead of hugging her, Lily extended her hand and the girl grinned as she shook it.

"And I'm Chase." Chase waved one of his large hands awkwardly at her, and Lily bit back a smile. This was going to be an interesting first few weeks.

"We haven't settled in quite yet," Lily informed Sage as she led the way inside the apartment, "Want to figure out rooms and stuff?" She prayed that Chase wouldn't attempt to get back on the subject of their job applications.

The three unpacked for the next few hours, and then Chase called out for pizza and they spent the evening trying to get to know one another. Of course, their questions were all surface ones, all simple. Lily found out that Sage was an only child, that she had attended a school in Massachusetts called Bishop Academy, and that she was obsessed with orange flavored chocolate. Chase had two younger sisters, had gone to a school in California affectionately called SanWitches (but apparently really called the San Francisco Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry) and had an affinity for dragons.

Lily told them that she had two older brothers, but nine cousins and that she had been in Gryffindor (which meant nothing to them, even after she explained the house system) and that she was brilliant at brewing hangover potions and cooking, which interested them both, since they were apparently shit at anything involving a stove.

Lily collapsed into her green quilted bed much later than she had planned, but she had needed to make a good impression on her roommates, especially considering that she expected that the next day would reveal her as the fraud that she was.

It wasn't, she decided as she tugged on her black skirt the next morning, that she wasn't qualified. She was positively brilliant at Charms. Other classes – Transfiguration, Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts, left her fumbling. But Charms and Potions? Those she could do without thinking, without speaking. So she would have gotten the job if she had applied. The problem, she knew, was that her boss wouldn't think her capable of anything more than simple enlargement charms, maybe an occasional _wingardium leviosa_. She'd have to prove to them that she could do the same work as Sage and Chase.

They hurried out onto the crowded New York City sidewalk at six o'clock that morning, while dawn still hung somewhere behind the skyscrapers and glowing neon signs advertised Budweiser and Coors Light from behind spotted glass windowpanes. None of them were particularly used to cities and their constant false-starts at intersections and near-misses with blaring taxicabs marked them as outsiders.

"I cannot wait until tomorrow, when we can bloody apparate," Lily muttered as they shoved against one another down the stairs into the piss-smelling subway tunnel. "Which bathroom is it?"

"The girls' one." An uncomfortable looking Chase led the way through the empty, grimy tiled room into the last stall, where the three crammed against each other and Lily twisted the lock in place.

"Why couldn't we Floo in?" Sage groaned as they all gripped at the empty toilet paper roll left sitting on the dispenser and awaited the familiar tug behind their navels.

"Because they hate us," Chase responded just as the six forty-five train shook the bathroom walls and the three of them were transported even further below ground, into a bright white room.

"Oh, thank Merlin. Last year, our new employees didn't make it to the portkey in time. It was an administrative nightmare, I'm sure you can imagine." A white haired man with silver glasses, dressed in long white robes, stepped forward to greet them, followed by two younger white-robed men, one with blond hair and the other red.

"Hey," Sage led their group forward. "I'm Sage."

"Yes," the old man nodded, "We know. And you are Chase," he pointed at Chase, whose face had taken on a faintly green tinge since their arrival in the room, "And you're Lily." His blue eyes met hers for a brief moment before he turned to his coworkers. "I am Dev. This is Malcolm," the man with the red hair, "and Leo," the black. "You will each be assigned to one of us and assist us with our work for two months, after which point we will reassess you and decide which section you will be most useful in, if any." He grabbed three pure white robes from the table at the center of the otherwise empty room and tossed one to each of the new hires. "This will be your uniform. Don't ask me why. I think that they originally chose all white as an intimidation tactic, but that is not our goal." It seemed to Lily that, with the mostly empty cavernous white room and his monotone voice and his refusal to smile, they were _only_ geared toward intimidation. "Sage, you will be working with me. Chase, you will be with Leo, and Lily, with Malcolm." Like redheads had to be paired. "Now, Sage, come this way." With a fleeting terrified glance at her roommates, Sage hurried after him through a door to the right, attempting to put on her robe as she moved.

Lily followed Malcolm to the left and into a cluttered room – a complete reversal from the entranceway. A row of mannequins leaned against one wall, all dressed in colorful strips of cloth, and a series of gold and silver bird cages hung from the ceiling, filling the room with echoing tweets and brightly colored feathers floated down occasionally.

"Now, look." Malcolm whirled to face her as soon as the door had closed. "I'm on probation for doing something stupid a few weeks ago. And no, I will not tell you what. So Dev assigned you to me, because he doesn't think that probation is enough. No, I have to be given our fucking poster child. Stand over there," he jabbed at a corner, the only spot in the room clear of clutter, "and don't move."

Lily drew in a deep breath. He wasn't even going to let her _do _magic. "Sir, I might've – "

But he interrupted her protest, "Did I say speak? No, I did not. Go over there."

Lily swore internally and moved to her corner.

And maybe she wasn't able to do anything but watch Malcolm fuck up experiment after experiment (from what she could tell, he was trying to charm the mannequins' clothing to the color of whichever bird he chose), but at least she didn't cause an explosion that blew up a lab and scorched off her hair.

That was poor Sage's mistake. The noise from the lab brought Malcolm, Lily, Chase and Leo out to the atrium, where Dev came rushing within two seconds and Sage a few seconds later, her wand directed at the door and her blond hair completely gone.

Dev didn't say anything, just glared at her and informed them all that he thought, "That was enough for one day."

Lily and Chase crossed the room to Sage and didn't say anything to each other or their supervisors as Chase grabbed hold of Sage's hand and twisted them home. Lily followed a split second later after glaring at each of the whispering bosses in turn.

"Shit." Sage dropped into the chair as soon as she landed in their apartment, her head dangling between her knees and her fingers absentmindedly stroking her bald scalp. "Fuckity fuck fuck fuck."

"What happened?" Chase was at the refrigerator, looking for something to drink, but all they had was orange juice, so he grabbed a glass and sloshed some in as Lily shed her white robes in a pile on the floor and tugged her wand from the pocket in her skirt, where it had been all day.

"I don't even know. One minute I was trying to figure out how to Charm a pot to continually boil water – without it all evaporating, somehow – and the next thing I know there's an explosion and…" her fingernails dug into her scalp as her voice wavered, "My hair's gone."

"Well, that I can fix." Lily tapped her wand lightly against Sage's fingers, "Although if you don't want hairy knuckles I'd move your hands."

"What?" Chase placed the glass of orange juice on the coffee table beside Sage and stared at Lily, "You can grow hair back? I thought you needed a potion for that."

"Oh, the healer at my school was always growing hair back. It's not really an issue. Although I did make some adjustments to the Charm so it stops at just your head – she always grew out eyebrows and beards and leg hair, and then she had to slice all that off after it was over. Quite an ordeal. But I've got two older brothers who liked to cut off my hair when I was little, so I figured out an easier way early on." She poked her wand at Sage's hand again, "Now move."

"Fine." Sage's trembling hands slid from her head and Lily muttered "_Capillus normus._" Sage's tangled mess of blond hair slowly regrew from her scalp, and stopped just past her shoulders. She reached her hands back to her hair and tugged gently, wincing as her fingers hit a snarled knot. "Oh, Merlin, thank you thank you thank you!" She flew to her feet and hugged Lily, then turned and grabbed hold of Chase, pulling him around in a hyper circle, "My hair's back, Chase! Did you see that? She just waved her wand and poof, there it was!"

Chase laughed, collapsing onto the couch, "Sorry, Sage, but I thought you were really working the bald look."

"Never," Sage grinned. "Now, even if I no longer have a job, at least I've got hair. You know," she turned to face Lily, who had collapsed on the floor by the empty fireplace, "I've got to admit that I was starting to wonder why they hired you. I mean, you're kind of…young. But I take it back. You're a miracle child."

Chase nodded, "I was wondering if you're like famous or something, over in Europe, since you seemed so clueless about the position. But maybe you actually do deserve it."

Lily groaned, "Will you please convince Malcolm of that? He seems to think that I'm his punishment for fucking up a few weeks ago."

"So he won't let you do anything?" Chase began drawing spirals of sparks in the air with his wand.

"I spent the day standing in a corner looking pretty."

"That sucks." Sage was still playing with her hair, "But wait, are you famous in Europe? _Is_ that why they hired you?"

Lily had just opened her mouth to respond when green flames erupted in the fireplace behind her, followed by a roar that tensed her stomach into a knot. "Lily Luna Potter, get your arse in here right – oh, hey!"

Lily rolled over onto her other side, so that her face was inches from the orange haired one ensconced in the cool flickering flames, as Chase and Sage began muttering softly behind her. "Hi, Teddy."

"'Hi, Teddy'?" He mimicked, his voice raising several octaves, "Hi Teddy?! What the fuck kind of greeting is that, Lily?"

"A normal one?" She pushed herself into a sitting position, tugging her hair out of its ponytail and allowing it to tumble around her shoulders in waves. She could tell from the vibrant shade of his hair, as well as from his tone of voice, that he was livid.

"Maybe if you were sitting in your living room, it would be. If you were sitting in the UK, or even Paris, then sure, I'd accept 'Hi, Teddy.' But you're not, are you? You're in the United bloody States of America, even though you said you wouldn't be going that far away from home."

"I know," Lily sighed, nervously picking at the silver polish on her thumb, "but, look, Ted, this was a better offer."

"Like you need money," he scowled.

"Not for the money, you arse. It was a better fit _for me_. And that's what you said, isn't it? That I should do what was right for me."

He hesitated, "Well, yeah, but I never thought that you'd want to go so far away from your family. Or that you'd leave without telling me you were going. What the hell was that about?"

Ever since she had decided to leave without talking to him, Lily had known this was coming. But she hadn't really planned out how she was going to explain her departure. "It was a last minute decision, Ted – "

But he broke in, "Like hell it was. I heard that Charlie came to visit you. Charlie, Lily. He lives in Romania, in case you hadn't noticed, but he heard about it in time to come say goodbye. I, on the other hand, live about two seconds from your house, and I didn't hear about it. Victoire knew, and I didn't. I'm betting that Victoire's grandmother in _France_ knew about it, that the American newspapers are full of the news that Harry Potter's daughter is working for one of their agencies, so the entire bloody country knows about it before me. I'm your best friend Lily, you've always told me everything first. Why not this?"

What could she say, that wasn't an accusation? How could she lie to him? That's why she hadn't told him in the first place, because she was, as Scorpius had pointed out, shit at lying, especially to Teddy.

"It wasn't…I didn't…you're all wrapped up in the wedding. I didn't want to distract you," she dropped her eyes to her hands as she spoke, examining the chipped mess that her right thumbnail had become.

Teddy was silent for a moment. "The wedding?" he asked, "You mean me and Vic?"

"No, Teddy, you and that banshee you've been seeing. Yes, you and Vic," she couldn't keep the bite out of her voice.

"Is that what this is about, the wedding?"

"No, of course not! I'm happy for you guys," Lily's voice didn't sound convincing, even to her ears.

"But I didn't talk to you before I proposed. Which I should have done, so now you're giving me the same treatment."

That actually was a perfect explanation. Lily wished that she had thought of it herself. Big, life-changing event for big-life changing event. "It's stupid and childish, I know, Ted." She sighed, like he had hit on her huge secret, "But hey, whoever said I wasn't a child? Although if you had told me, everyone would have said that I cheated in the bet and didn't deserve all the money I won."

Teddy chuckled, "Merlin, you lot _would _put a wager on when I finally proposed. If you'd been around in the War, you would have been placing wagers over whether or not your dad would be able to defeat Voldemort."

"Really, now, that was uncalled for," Lily laughed, "There would have been nobody to bet against."

"Yeah, I suppose your dad was the clear winner," Teddy smiled, and his hair slowly shifted back to its original brown.

"I wouldn't necessarily say that," Lily joked, "I think we'd all have lost a lot of money betting for Voldemort."

"Oh, you would have, would you?" Teddy smiled, "Sorry I blew up at you, and sorry I didn't talk to you before I proposed."

"Sorry I didn't tell you before I left." Lily grinned at him, then asked the question that she _needed_ an honest answer to, "Are you happy, Ted?"

His smile slipped a fraction before he was able to stabilize it and respond, "Yeah, I am." His eyes told her he was, his voice told her he was, but his lips begged her to save him. Lily pushed that thought from her mind. She was clearly just fantasizing.

"Well, good. I should probably get going, but we'll talk again soon."

"Tomorrow," Teddy replied.

"Tomorrow," Lily promised and waved as Teddy disappeared from the fireplace and the green fire flickered out. She sighed as she turned to find Chase and Sage ready to pounce in the doorway to the kitchen.

"Lily _Potter_?" Chase spat out.

"Your dad _killed Voldemort_?" Sage hissed.

"Guys, it's not really that – "

"I swear to Merlin, if you say it's not that big a deal, I will murder you." Chase came into the room and grabbed Lily by the arms, "Sit here and spill." He set her on the armchair and he and Sage sat down on the couch.

"What's there to spill?" Lily sighed, "I'm the youngest child and only daughter of Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley. My dad was given a job pretty much the second he was born and he succeeded. He married my mum, who was a war hero and a successful Quidditch player in her own right, had James and Al and me, and he now works as an auror. If you know who he is, you probably know the story better than I do."

"But what's he like behind the story?" Sage leaned forward.

"Cocky, I bet. Full of himself, right?"

Lily laughed, "The exact opposite. My Aunt Hermione says he had a bit of a complex back then – a 'saving people thing,' and I think he's still got it. He's a workaholic, but he's always been there if we needed him…and I don't have any scandals to tell you, sorry if that disappoints you."

"So, wait." Chase leaned back, "You actually like your famous father?"

Lily nodded, "He's one of my favorite people in the world. I wouldn't trade him for anyone."

"But if you could have your family, without the fame, would you?" Sage asked, her eyes narrowing as Lily's cheeks heated.

"In a split second." Lily sighed, "See, I'm good at Charms, brilliant at Potions, but I'll never be recognized as earning anything on my own. Even this job…apparently I'm just there for my fame." She ran a hand through her hair, "And if they won't even let me do magic, I don't know how to prove them wrong."

"You'll just need to save Malcolm from a fire-breathing canary or something." Chase suggested, and Lily smiled.

"All right, I'll accept that your dad and mum are scandal-free, because I never really wanted to think of Harry Potter as a bad guy. But spill about the boy who just Flooed!" Sage leaned forward so far that she needed to cup her chin in her hands and her eyes scanned Lily's now bright red face. "Ex-boyfriend, current boyfriend, sometimes lover? Are you his mistress?"

"Merlin, no!" Lily laughed, "It's weird to think of Teddy like that. He's my dad's godson, and since his parents died in the war he's pretty much grown up with us. He's marrying my eldest cousin."

"Why was he so pissed, then?" Chase asked, taking a drink from Sage's orange juice.

"Because he hates being left out of things. You know, as the only member of our family who isn't actually related to us, he's sensitive about his place in the family. He's the only one I didn't tell before I left, which kind of pissed him off. As you saw."

"Oh, the good old 'always the last to know' syndrome." Chase nodded.

"I think that there's something more there," Sage said. "But if you don't want to talk about it, fine. Not my job to pry."

Lily laughed, "There's nothing more. Honest." She stood, "Who wants what for dinner? I'm cooking."

Chase stretched over the back of the couch, "You're officially my favorite redhead ever."

"I second that." Sage smiled a promise not to bring up the Teddy question again.

Unfortunately, Lily found that whatever progress she had made in solidifying her place with her roommates, her supervisors still saw her as their vapid, spoiled, mascot. Her second day at work, Malcolm sent her to the corner again, her third, he told her to go stand in "your corner."

Friday morning, Sage and Chase woke Lily up by splashing cold water on her face. "Today, Lily Potter, you are going to prove your awesomeness to our asshole bosses."

Lily groaned and pulled her sopping pillow over her wet face, "That…was not very nice."

"Yes, yes, we're bastards, we know." Chase bounced on her bed, "But Lily, you need to be awake today."

"Why?" Lily spoke into her pillow, clutching the fabric against her face as Sage tried to tug it from her fingers, "I'm just going to spend it in my corner."

"No, you are not," Sage finally got the pillow away from Lily's face. "Since after the disaster on the first day I was switched to Leo's assistant, and since Chase is now working with Dev, we thought that if Chase blows something up, then Dev will have no choice but to bring you in and give Chase to Malcolm."

"That's the stupidest plan I've ever heard. You shouldn't mess up your job just for me."

Chase rolled his eyes, "Well, if _you're_ not going to do anything about it, you've left us no choice. We can't just let them keep paying you for nothing, you know."

Lily sat up, "I'll do something about it. Today. But don't you _dare_ blow anything up, Chase."

"Fine, fine," Chase stood up, "Better get ready, kid."

"Right." Lily rolled from beneath her covers and shooed the other two from her room.

She was already sitting in her corner when Malcolm arrived, and he barely spared a disgusted glance for her. She watched him direct his wand at an orange canary for a few moments before speaking. "I have a question."

"No questions," Malcolm responded.

"Fine." Lily stood up and crossed the room, picking her way across the feather and shit strewn floor carefully, "I have a solution."

Malcolm laughed, "You do realize why you were hired, right? In case you haven't caught on, it wasn't to work."

"You know," Lily tapped her chin with her wand, the first time it had been out of her pocket at work, "when my dad defeated Voldemort, he said it wasn't because he was a powerful wizard. But truth is, my dad _defeated Voldemort._ I know you know that, since that's why I was hired –I've caught on. But we all know that my dad really is a powerful wizard, and I don't just have his famous last name, I've got his genes. I'm bloody brilliant – I was so good at Charms that I passed my NEWT in Sixth Year." She smiled, "So maybe you didn't hire me to work, but I am going to work." She directed her wand at the bird and flicked her wrist _just so_, thinking a nonverbal spell that she had been silently inventing in the corner over the past week, and the bird let out a sharp chirp as he fluttered across the room to the mannequin against the far wall and landed on its shoulder, flapping his wings and changing the rags to an orange shade identical to his feathers in an instant.

Malcolm turned astonished eyes to Lily's. "How did you do that?"

Lily smiled, "I told you, I'm bloody brilliant."

"You're the poster-child of all of bloody Britain, for fuck's sake. You can't actually be good at anything."

Lily raised one eyebrow, "I just did in thirty seconds what you've been attempting to do for who knows how long. I wouldn't question my intelligence if I were you. Although, I'm also curious about what the point of this little exercise is. I mean, who cares whether or not your shirt matches the color of a canary's feathers?"

He didn't respond.

Lily stared at him, "Fine, you know what, if you still don't think I deserve to be here, then I quit."

She turned for the door, half-hoping that he would call after her, half praying that she could go back home and spend the rest of her life pining after Teddy.

"Wait." Malcolm's voice sounded hard, tense, resistant. "Let's not be drastic."

Lily turned, her face cool and disinterested, although her eyes relayed some of the burning anger that boiled through her veins, "And how should we not be drastic, Malcolm?"

"You tell me what Charm you used, and I'll…I'll let you help out."

Lily grinned, "I just want to work, Malcolm. So fine."

Over the next week, Malcolm slowly allowed Lily more and more leeway in their lab, and finally on Friday she admitted to Chase and Sage that she felt "Almost at home."

Chase considered that cause for celebration, so he ventured out into the city on Friday afternoon and stumbled upon a liquor store and bought two bottles of champagne. "One of these days," Chase informed Sage and Lily as he popped the cork, "We will go out into the City and actually meet people."

Lily shook her head, smiling, "Like, walk out this door and cross the street without getting hit? I don't know, seems risky to me."

"There must be wizarding bars that we can apparate to." Sage said, completely serious.

Lily laughed, "Oh, Sage."

"Here, guys," Chase passed them glasses of champagne, and they clinked the crystal together, sloshing amber liquid against the sides.

Two bottles of champagne later, they were all a bit tipsy (or maybe more than a bit) and Chase tugged the second empty bottle from the table.

He spun it in a circle on the floor and Lily shook her head, "Uh uh, I am so not playing spin the bottle, Chasey."

Chase looked offended, "What, you don't want to kiss this?" He waved a hand down the length of his body, and Sage licked her lips.

"I do," she whined.

Lily shook her head, "Not me."

"Well, I wasn't going to say we should play spin the bottle. I wanted to play truth or dare."

"Oh!" Lily nodded, her red hair swinging around her face, "Yes, please."

The first few dares and truths were, as they always are, light hearted and easy. Until Sage spun and the mouth of the bottle landed on Lily and Lily said, "Dare."

Sage twirled a few strands of blond hair around her finger, "I dare you to…I dare you to Floo the one person that you do not want to talk to."

Lily bit her lip. It would be easy to lie and Floo Hugo or Rose or James. But she wasn't a liar, and the person she least wanted to talk to…well, that was easy, wasn't it?

She stood and walked to the fireplace, conjuring a fire from the tip of her wand and sprinkling the flames with powder. She stuck her head in and spoke against the feathery flames, "Victoire Weasley."  
Just as she had feared, her eyes met two pairs of legs set against Vic's dark blue couch – hers, in sparkling silver leggings, and his, in ratty, familiar jeans. She could just make out the black heart that she had scratched into them with a quill ages ago, in a fit of boredom. luckily, the legs weren't entangled. They were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, and stacks and stacks of magazines and papers and fabric samples took up the space between them. Teddy was trying to look interested, and Victoire was babbling excitedly.

Teddy caught sight of her first, "Lily? What's wrong? Are you okay?" He crossed the room and dropped to his knees before her, his eyes searching her face worriedly. Victoire followed a moment later, a smile curving her perfect lips and her blue eyes glinting possessively.

"Everything's just perfect, Theodooore! Why would anything be wrong?"

"Are you drunk?" Victoire asked, her voice tinted with disgust and surprise.

"Just a tad," Lily laughed. "I like New York. They've got way better stuff here than we ever got at Hogwarts."

"Lily Potter!" Victoire sounded scandalized, but Teddy closed his hand around hers and Lily couldn't stop the scowl that spread across her lips at the contact.

"So what're you two up to? Wedding stuffs?"

Victoire's face lit up, "Yes! Oh, Lily, you're going to need to come home for a weekend soon, because we'll need to fit you for a dress and – "

"Hold up." Lily glanced from Vic to Teddy and back again, "Aren't you the one who's getting married? Don't you need the dress?"

Victoire blinked, and Teddy started, "Lil, maybe – "

"Wait, wait, wait," Lily laughed, "You don't mean you want me to be one of your bridesmaids, do you?"

"Well, yes. I was going to ask you," Victoire's voice was stilted.

"Oh," Lily probably would have continued laughing if Teddy's face hadn't turned so serious and threatening, "Well, thank you. When's the wedding, again?"

"Six weeks." Victoire said.

"That soon?" Lily blinked, "Merlin, aren't you rushing into a bit?"

Victoire rolled her eyes, "I wouldn't call eight years of dating exactly rushing, Lily. So you'll be my bridesmaid?"

"Huh?" Lily tore her eyes away from Teddy's stony expression, "Oh, no."

"No?" Victoire echoed, anger tightening her voice.

"I won't be home in time for your wedding. Sorry."

"Sorry?" That time it was Teddy repeating her.

"That's what I said. They won't let me leave work. I'm sure it'll be great. I wouldn't make a good bridesmaid anyway, Vic. I'm too clumsy." She could hear Chase and Sage getting restless behind her, and so she smiled at her cousin and her Teddy, "I'd better go, I left in the middle of a game of truth or dare." She blew a kiss to them and jerked her head out of the fire, but when she turned to find Chase and Sage lying on the carpet, their lips locked together and their hands searching clumsily, she wished that she had kept her face buried in the fire.

"I'm just gonna…go to bed," she muttered, hurrying from the room and collapsing in a tired lump on her green comforter.

Lily was alone on Sunday afternoon. Sage and Chase had gone out grocery shopping or exploring or something, and Lily, noticing the furtive glances they had been exchanging since Friday night, had told them that she'd rather spend the day finishing settling in. Although, truth was, she'd rather have been wandering the streets with her roommates than sitting alone on her bed, scribbling notes on a Charm that she was attempting to manipulate.

She had just crumpled up an ink-covered sheet of parchment and tossed it in the bin when she heard a familiar voice calling her name from the living room. She really thought that they'd said all they'd needed to say on Friday night. Maybe this time Victoire wouldn't be hovering over him, flaunting her ownership of him like the bitch she was. Well, Lily reasoned as she left her room and hurried for the fireplace, that wasn't really fair. She couldn't hate Victoire. (Well, actually she could_._ She _shouldn't_ hate Victoire.)

"What's going on, Ted?" Lily dropped to her knees before the fire, tugging her sweater back into place as it slipped from her shoulder.

"I need to ask you something. Something real, Lil, so please don't shrug it off, the way you do sometimes."

Lily nodded, "All right."

"Why won't you come to my wedding?" His eyes were a shade of blue that she had never seen before, torn between the melancholy blue of the Sunday evening sky and the angry gray of the Atlantic during a rainstorm.

"I told you, Teddy. I can't just pick up and leave work yet. When you got engaged, I assumed that it would be a while before the wedding, and that I'd be able to take vacation time then. But you guys are getting married a lot sooner than I expected." She felt her heart clench and forced her voice to remain nonchalant, "There's not a reason for that, is there?"

Teddy blinked in surprise, his eyes darkening and his hair shifting from brown to black, "You mean like…? Merlin, no, Lily, how could you even think that?"

She shrugged, trying to keep the relief from her face. "Sorry, it's just that it all seems kind of rushed."

He nodded, "I know." He was silent a moment, "But, you're Lily Potter. They would let you take a day off to travel to England, and the wedding's on a Saturday, so you could leave on Sunday, no trouble."

Lily closed her eyes, "I've just spent two weeks trying to make them forget who I am and just see me as another employee. I don't want to pull the last name on them, ever."

"Not even for me?" Usually, when they spoke like that to each other, there was a layer of humor overlaying the pleading tone, even if they meant it. Usually, he would never have been so transparent.

Usually, Lily would have done anything to be there for Teddy if he asked for her.

"Why do you need me there so much?" Lily asked, hating herself for pressing the question on her obviously emotionally fragile friend, but needing to know.

He stared at her with those inexplicable blue eyes, "Don't you want to be there? I mean, it's my wedding day, Lil. I don't mean to be conceited, but it's kind of a big deal."

She closed her eyes, "I do want to be there." It was really only a half lie. She would very much like to be at Teddy's wedding if he were marrying, say, _her_. Or at Victoire's, if she were marrying _anyone-but-Teddy_. Lily would gladly hand her cousin over to Voldemort's dust as a bride – that wedding she'd undoubtedly attend. "But I can't."

"I don't get why, though."

"Let me explain how this works," Lily settled into a cross legged position, allowing some red hair to fall forward out of her loose ponytail and cover her face, "You're my best friend, she's one of my cousins, and I have seen you two together countless times before. I know what you look like together, I don't need to see you two in dress robes in order to know that you're married. I, on the other hand, have not got this position in the bag. And I don't mean to say that this job is more important to me than you, Teddy, because it absolutely isn't. But it is more important to me than your wedding day." That may have been too harsh, Lily realized, as Teddy's head visibly jerked back in the fire, and his lips twisted in hurt or anger. So she continued, "Unless you can give me a reason, a real explanation, for why you seem to need me there."

"You're Lily."

"That's not a reason."

He closed his eyes for a second, "It is for me. You are my best friend. You've been there for every big thing in my life. This won't feel real, it won't mean as much, unless you're there."

Lily felt pain building in her stomach, spreading through her limbs. It wasn't _fair_. It wasn't fair for him to ask her to be there, and it wasn't fair for him to depend on her, when she couldn't depend on him, not the way she needed to. "That's not the way it works, Teddy."

"What do you mean?" He looked surprised, like he had expected that if he reminded her of their best friendship she would automatically give in.

"Your wedding day has nothing to do with me. All that you should care about is that Victoire is there. You should be perfectly content to get married on a boat in the middle of an ocean, with no one there but you and her. Because she's the one that matters, Teddy. I don't matter. When she walks into the room that day, she should be all that you're thinking about. You should feel like – like every one of your dreams has come true when she's standing there, you should still feel the butterflies that you felt when you first fell in love with her, your eyes should be on her, only on her. Believe me, on your wedding day, you won't even notice that I'm not there." She managed to keep her voice steady with an effort, and held back angry tears.

"Lily, that's not true." Teddy's voice was level, but when she finally turned her eyes back to his, she could see that he too, for some reason, was struggling to keep his composure.

"Dammit Teddy, it _should _be!" She stood and turned her back to the fire, "You should go."

"Lil." His voice was hesitant, soft, "What's going on?"

She closed her eyes, her back straight, struggling to keep her voice steady, "Nothing. I've just had a bad week and I really – I can't – I won't – Look, Ted, it's nothing that you need to worry about." She turned around, a smile attached to her face and her eyes confidently seeking his, "But I'm sorry. As of right now, I can't leave work and come to England for your wedding. If that changes, I'll let you know."

Teddy sighed, "Fine, Lily. But I still think there's something more going on. You can tell me, you know. Friend troubles? Boy troubles?"

Lily let out a short laugh, "Oh, Merlin, Teddy. I really can't talk to you about this."

"So there is a boy?" He sounded surprised, and the expression on his face was somewhat hurt. "Is it your roommate?"

Lily shook her head, "Believe me, Ted. There is no boy. I wish there was." He stared at her, his eyes scanning her face for some sign of a lie, but she spoke again before he could begin psycho-analyzing her. "I've really got to go. Bye, Teddy." And she left the room before he could respond, before he disappeared from her fireplace.

She returned to her bedroom, but rather than continuing to work on her Charm, she fell into the pile of ink-spattered parchment on her bed and screamed into the pages. Once her lungs could hold no more air, she sat up, scrubbed angry hands at the tears streaking her cheeks, took a deep breath, and returned to her Charm. She would _not_ fall to pieces over a stupid, stupid boy. She would breathe and smile and just be. She refused to cry over him again, because she was not that girl (she had never been that girl).

**A/N:** And that's done.

More dialogue than I like to use, I know. But this was character-development in its very lowest form. I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, so let me know in a **review**! (Please and thank you!)

(I've got two more chapters planned to finish this, and the next two will be much more Teddy-centric, no worries. I just wanted to establish Lily in NYC in this one, and that required more characters, and then none of them would shut up when I told them to…so it didn't work out quite like I wanted it to. But oh, well.)

Hope you liked!


	3. three

**A/N:** It's summer! I actually like this chapter, so I hope you do too. It will either make you detest or pity Victoire. I kind of hope it's the former, because otherwise you might hate the way I treat her.  
Also, for anyone who cares, the Celtics are totally owning NBA playoffs.  
AND I have made a Lily/Teddy playlist (which I oh so creatively titled "games of starlight and of fate") on Youtube. I'll post the URL in my profile eventually, if anyone's interested.

**Disclaimer:** Sad story: Harry Potter isn't mine.

THREE  
And sometimes it turns out  
That it's the prince,  
Not the princess,  
Who needs the rescuing.

Victoire was not a bad person. She _wasn't_, but she was a bit obsessive about her wedding. And, all right, maybe Lucy hadn't been so off base when she called her a bridezilla. But isn't your wedding the one day that you're allowed to go crazy over? Victoire readily admitted that she was one of those clichéd girls who'd been dreaming of that day since she was three and first saw that illustration at the end of her mother's worn copy of _Cendrillon_. The one of once trodden-upon Cinderella dressed in a wedding gown woven of starlight, dancing in the arms of her Prince.

Victoire would marry Teddy, of course – that and the crystal heels were the two constants in her dream – and his hair would be black and his eyes would be blue, and when she walked down the aisle those eyes would never, _ever_, leave hers again. She'd wear a strapless dress of white silk, with lightlightlight blue flowers embroidered along the hem and sprays of crystals sewn into the bodice, and her veil would be hand-woven lace, long enough to fully cover her hair, which she'd wear in a straight blonde waterfall to her waist. She would look (be) perfect.

And then she grew up and she started imagining how she'd dress her bridesmaids and how she'd line them up beside her. For the last several years she had been imagining Molly, Lucy, Rose, Roxie, and Lily dressed in light blue (almost white) sheath dresses, while Dom, as her maid of honor, would wear dark blue. That made a total of six women at Vic's side, and those women had been a factor of her dream for seventeen years. Victoire refused to let little Lily Potter ruin her wedding day. (And wasn't it ironic that she'd been jealous of how close Lily and Teddy were, and now that the bitch was gone all Vic wanted was for her to come back?)

She was lucky, though, because at least she could ask Teddy to talk to Lily, at least she knew that her dream was salvageable.

On the Friday two weeks after a sloppy Lily took her spoiled, dirty little heel and crushed Victoire's perfect wedding beneath it, Teddy arrived at Vic's apartment looking rather exhausted and not at all in the mood for wedding talk.

"Teddy," Victoire smiled at him, her lips all pale pink gloss and her eyes examining the vivid bags under his. "We can take tonight off from wedding planning, if you want."

"Can we?" The relieved smile that tugged at his mouth made him look much more like himself

"Yeah. Let's go out for drinks, or dancing, or something." She took his hand in hers and grabbed her sweater from the stand by the door. He smiled and dropped a light kiss on her hair – the closest his lips had gotten to hers in what felt like ages – and opened the door for her.

They walk down the stairs in companionable silence, but Vic broke it when they hit the street. "I've just got one thing to say about the wedding, Ted, and then I swear I won't mention it again tonight."

"You swear?" he asked, as if he expected her to keep her promise.

"I do." She smiled at him, and he nodded, his strange-blue colored eyes avoiding hers and his hair shifting a deeper shade of brown. Victoire may have been wrapped up in her wedding, but she had noticed that Teddy had been acting odd for the past few weeks. She couldn't imagine a reason, though. Maybe it was something to do with work – she wouldn't let herself consider that it might have had something to do with her, with _them_.

"What's up, then?" Teddy asked.

"Can you please convince Lily to come? I really want her there."

For some reason, that question seemed to offend him. His hair lightened to the shade of brown-orange that Lily had once told Victoire she called his "warning color", and his eyes jerked to the sidewalk as he lengthened his stride, pulling her along beside him so her heels clicked at an alarming rate on the concrete. "I think that you're out of luck there. She didn't want to come."

"But I don't understand, Teddy. I mean, I'm her cousin and you're you – how could she not want to be there?"

"I don't know." His stride was exhausting to keep up with. Victoire stopped and Teddy let go of her hand as he turned to face her.

"But shouldn't you know? Come on, Teddy, I only gave you two jobs. I told you to get all the invitations out, and to make sure that everyone can come. I want Lily there!" She didn't quite stomp her black heeled foot on the ground, but she did tap it angrily.

Teddy shifted uncomfortably, aware of the passersby watching him and Vic curiously. They'd never had a public row before, and he was not particularly interested in having their first one on the crowded London sidewalk, and especially not over Lily.

Victoire eyed Teddy angrily, her tan skin flushed and her eyes critically sweeping his hair for signs of a transition into his true "danger-color" of vibrant orange. "You two didn't have an argument, did you? She's not upset with you, is she? Because, honestly, Ted, there's no reason for that to last. Go apologize, and I'm sure she'll agree to come."

Teddy struggled to control his hair – he suddenly wished fiercely that his mother was there, that she could explain to him how to keep control of his appearance. This time, he just about managed it – at least his hair wasn't so orange that it burned to look at, like it could have been. "We haven't fought."

"Well, what is it then? Dammit, Ted, she's got to be there!"

"Don't you think I know that?" Teddy's voice slipped out from between angry lips, rising in the noise of the city, "Don't you think I need – want her there? But she's not coming, Victoire. She will not come."

Victoire's eyes narrowed, "How do you know? Have you talked to her since she Flooed that night?"

Teddy shook his head, feeling the pointless lie slip on his tongue, "No. No. But I know Lily well enough to know that she was serious when she told us that she couldn't come. Just let it be, Victoire." She opened her mouth to argue, but Teddy reached for her hand, "Please, just let it be, and come dance."

Victoire stared at him for a moment before nodding and taking his hand. "All right." But she noticed during the whole night of (Teddy's) bitter shots and (her) classy cocktails that he was not really there. But that, she realized, had been their relationship lately. Hopefully after the wedding, things would turn right again.

It all came back to the wedding – that ideally perfect, unblemished, flawless day. The day that Victoire would tell her and Teddy's children about, someday. The day that would work out _exactly_ as she had always dreamed, because Victoire did not accept failure. And while she recognized that having four bridesmaids was not really such a huge problem, she was through with being rational. She needed Lily there, and no matter what Teddy said, she was going to get the girl there, if she had to Floo to America herself and drag her back by her foolishly long red hair.

Or, she realized when she awoke late on Saturday morning, not suffering a hangover because she never got hungover, but needing a headache potion just the same, she could let someone else do the dragging-across-the-ocean for her. Someone other than Teddy, clearly, since he might actually blow up if she mentioned Lily again.

Someone like Harry, who was, Victoire well knew, the only person that Lily actually respected. Her Uncle Harry generally spent his Saturdays alone with Aunt Ginny, but Victoire knew that her mother had stolen Ginny this weekend, so Harry would hopefully be alone.

She arrived at the door to their cottage in the early afternoon to find Harry sitting on the front porch, scribbling on a roll of parchment. He glanced up and smiled when he saw her. "Hi, Vic. Want to have a seat?"

"Hi, Uncle Harry." She settled on one of the wicker chairs, tucking her legs up beneath her.

"What's going on?" He dropped his quill to the table and pushed his silver-framed glasses up his nose.

"I have a favor to ask you." Harry nodded, so she continued, "Teddy and I spoke with Lily a few weeks ago, and she told us that she couldn't come to the wedding because of work." Victoire pushed her blonde hair over her shoulder and met Harry's concerned green eyes, "I understand that Lily is a workaholic, and that she might actually enjoy her job. I also get that she wants to make a good impression. But I'm worried that she's staying away for some other reason. I mean, she flew off to the States with barely any warning, and now she won't even miss a day of work for my wedding? It just doesn't seem like Lily." Harry didn't look entirely convinced, so Victoire added, "I mean, it's just weird, you know? Teddy's her best friend; I'd think that she'd do anything to be at his wedding. And I know he wants her there."

Harry nodded slowly, "It's not like her, I know. And we haven't heard much from Lily since she left, either. I was planning on giving her a few more weeks…but…" He shook his head, "You're worried about her?"

Victoire nodded vigorously, "Yeah. This isn't just because I want her at my wedding, Uncle Harry, although obviously I do. I want to be sure she's all right."

Harry sighed, "The boys both came to me last week and asked me to check on her as well. I'll Floo over there and see how she's doing." He chuckled, "I was getting bored here, anyway. Can you please ask your mum not to take Ginny away on Saturdays anymore?"

"Sure thing, Uncle Harry." Victoire stood, "I'll see you later." She hesitated, "Could you not tell Teddy that I asked you to go? He's touchy about the Lily issue, for some reason."

Harry glanced at her sharply, "They didn't fight, did they?"

"He says they didn't." Victoire shrugged, "I think he's probably just hurt that she left without telling him and that she's not planning on coming back for the wedding. You know, best friend, loyalty, all that."

"Sure," Harry looked thoughtful for a moment, before hugging Victoire and hurrying into the house as she apparated away.

[x]

Unlike nearly everyone she knew at home, Lily enjoyed mornings – she adored waking up early, running before the sun warmed the concrete and baked the fumes, and showering before anyone else had a chance to steal the bathroom. Her habits hadn't changed since she came to the City, and her pre-dawn runs had made her much more comfortable with the rushed pace of New York.

Chase sometimes ran with her, especially if he needed advice about Sage or wanted to wake up early to get work done, or something, and he followed Lily out the door early that Saturday. He didn't talk though, so Lily didn't try to start anything with him, praying that he just needed the run to clear his head. She was tired of shipping out advice to Sage and Chase about the early stages of their relationship – the two of them really just needed to talk more, that was all.

They ran down toward East River Park and Lily tried to focus on her footfalls, counting out the rhythm as she breathed in-out-in-out. The air fell heavy, humid across them as they ran and she could almost feel the rain-drops pulsing through the clouds above them. Lily knew that this was one of those days where you'd feel disappointed if the clock ticked to midnight without anything life-changing happening; it just _felt_ like change.

Chase broke the breath-punctuated silence when they reached the Park. "Lil, I was wondering if you'd be all right with clearing out of the apartment for a bit tonight. I wanted to try cooking dinner for Sage, and…I mean, it'll be more special if…"

"You're alone." Lily smiled, keeping her voice steady, "Absolutely. I'll head over to Mik's Place or the Diner."

"Great! Thanks, Lily. I don't mean to kick you out of the apartment."

"I get it, Chase. No worries – it's really sweet of you."

He grinned, "I'm just trying to convince Sage that she wants us to be exclusive. She's all, 'we're too young to settle down,' 'we just met,' 'I don't know you.' Christ, it's not like I'm asking her to marry me."

Lily shook her head, "She's just scared. She'll come around, Chase. I'd say you're doing a good job convincing her."

He shrugged, "We'll see."

They took a longer run than usual, and when they got back to the apartment the door was open, and Sage was sitting in the living room, dressed in one of Chase's flannel shirts and staring in shock-tinged-awe at Harry, who was sitting on the sofa telling her some story of a recent case.

"Lily!" He stood when Chase and Lily entered the room and hurried to hug her, ignoring her sweat-drenched tank-top. "How are you?"

"Hi, Dad," Lily kissed his cheek and pulled away. "This is my flat-mate Chase. Chase, my dad."

Chase shook Harry's hand, keeping his expression slightly more reserved than Sage's awestruck one, as Lily continued, "What're you doing here?"

Harry shrugged, "I didn't have much to do today, and I thought I might as well come over and check on you."

"You realize you Flooed across the Atlantic, right? It's not like I live the next town over, or anything." Lily walked to the kitchen and filled a glass with water from the fridge, gulping it down before refilling the glass and handing it to Chase.

"International travel isn't really an issue for me, remember?" Harry grinned, "Child-hero, and all that. I've got an international apparation license."

"Which you're only supposed to use in work connected to the Auror Department," Lily pointed out. "Well, it's nice to see you, anyway. I just need to shower, and then I'll take you out to brunch and you can tell me why you really came."

Her father nodded, "Sounds good." Lily disappeared into the back and Harry turned to find her flat-mates staring at him as if all their dreams had just turned out to be real.

But instead of asking about the War, Chase collapsed beside Sage and asked, "So, what was Lily like as a kid?"

Lily came out of the bathroom to find her father reenacting the tantrum that she had thrown when she found out that she couldn't go to Hogwarts with Al. "You know," she said from the doorway, "It's really not nice to make fun of me when I'm not around to defend myself."

"Oh, you're a big girl. You can take a little teasing," Sage said. "Go shower, Chase, you smell."

"You all set?" Harry asked.

"Yeah." Lily grabbed her bag from the coffee table and waved to Sage, "See you later, Sagey."

Sage rolled her eyes and returned the wave, "Adios, Lilykins. It was nice meeting you," she added to Harry.

"You too," Harry followed Lily out into the hallway and they rode the elevator in silence, as Lily's eyes scanned his face.

"Does Diner food sound good? It's a Muggle restaurant, but they cook great eggs."

"Sure."

They talked about James's latest girlfriend and Al's work and Ginny's decision to apply for a position at the Ministry, until their heaping plates sat in front of them. Then Lily asked again, "Why're you here?"

"Because I'm worried about you, and the boys are worried about you, and Victoire is worried about you."

Lily was partially surprised that Teddy's name didn't appear on that list, "Why, though? I'm doing well."

"But you're not coming back for the wedding. Which is strange."

Lily raised an eyebrow. Why the bloody hell was everyone so caught up in Teddy's stupid wedding? "Why's it odd? I'm not really a fan of weddings, you all know that."

"But you and Teddy have always been close, right?" Harry took a bite of egg, swallowed and continued, "Teddy calls you his best friend, and I've certainly heard you call him yours. So it's weird that you don't want to go to his wedding."

Lily rolled her eyes, "Like I told Teddy and Victoire, I can't leave work yet."

"And as I'm sure they told you, you'd only have to miss one day, if that. I could probably arrange with International Travel for you to get an international apparation license, and then you'd be able to get home and back here on the weekend, without missing any work. But am I right in thinking that you'll come up with an excuse then, too?"

Lily shrugged, crunching angrily into a piece of bacon, "I don't get why everyone is trying to get me to come. Teddy Floo called me a couple of weeks ago and practically begged, and Al and James both sent me Owls. It's not like the wedding depends on me."

"Teddy called?" Harry blinked. He wondered if Victoire had known that. Probably not, he decided, as Lily fought the blush that rose in her cheeks. She was acting very strangely, but it wasn't really a new type of strange. She had been acting different – more reserved – for a while now, so long that he almost forgot how carefree and open his little girl had once been. "Tell me the truth, Lily. Please. I'm really starting to worry about you. Why won't you come home for the wedding?"

Lily dropped her head into her hands and gripped her still-damp red hand between trembling fingers. Her voice sounded bitter, self-deprecating, when she finally answered him, "Because I can't watch him – I can't see him – I just…I can't be there when they get married."

Harry bit his tongue for a moment, trying to understand. "It's Teddy?"

"It's Teddy," Lily's voice trembled for a moment, before she caught hold of it. "And it's stupid, because he's too old and he and Vic were clearly made for each other and I should be happy for them and I just," she drew in one jagged breath of air, "I can't."

"Oh, Lil," Harry reached across the table and very gently pushed some hair away from her face. "I'm sorry."

"What?" Lily asked, suddenly angry, "No judging, no wondering how I could fall for someone so wrong for me, nothing?"

"Lily Luna Potter," Harry's voice was steady, the way it used to be when she was young and she would fall and cut her knee and would come crying into the house because she thought she might die because blood didn't belong on the outside of skin, "You fell in love with Teddy, and no one should judge that. All that matters is that you love him. And while I wish that you hadn't fallen for him, it's not because of the age difference. I just wish that you could be spared this heart break."

Lily smiled sadly at him, "Thanks, Daddy."

Harry nodded, "And your mother would feel the same way, and so would your brothers, although I of course won't tell them. But Lily, you should never be ashamed of who you love."

"I know that. I do." Lily sighed, "But it seems wrong. Because of the age difference, but more because he has Vic and because she's my cousin and I used to like her, Dad, but now I really, really hate her. It's not fair to her or Teddy or me."

Harry nodded, "It's not fair. If I could, I would change it for you." He sighed, "But I promise I won't bug you about the wedding again, and I'll keep the others from doing it too."

Lily laughed, "I'd appreciate that."

"Now," Harry said, "I wanted to ask you about something for a case I'm working on. The guy uses curse-work that I've never seen before. Is there a chance that he's creating his own?"

Lily nodded, pulling her mind away from Teddy and toward the much more comfortable subject of spell creation.

Harry remembered ring shopping with Teddy a lot more vividly than he'd have liked. He remembered how they went into many, many shops. He remembered how Teddy told him that he was using the engagement as a way to put off the marriage – although that plan had apparently failed. But he also remembered that until Teddy chose Victoire's ring, he hadn't been looking at rings that the part-veela would have liked. He had been examining simple gold rings, occasionally adorned with rubies or emeralds – rings that Lily would have loved. Rings that had certainly reminded Harry of Lily. And so, as he sat chatting with his daughter about her job and about her plans and about how much she loved her flat-mates, he was trying to figure out whether or not it was possible.

And he had decided that it was very possible.

So after he left Lily, he apparated directly to Teddy's flat. It was late, but Teddy was still up, sitting on the floor of his living room with photographs spread around him.

The younger man glanced up in surprise, "Hi, Harry."

"Teddy," Harry moved across the room and crouched beside his godson.

"What're you doing here so late? Is everything all right?"

"Oh, everything's fine. I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing – we haven't seen you in a while, and I was starting to worry."

Teddy shrugged, dropping a few moving photographs in his lap, "Yeah, I've been busy with work and the wedding and all. I'll stop by tomorrow, maybe."

"Sure," Harry reached out and picked up a photograph from the floor. He smiled. It was a picture of a young Teddy and Victoire, but his tiny Lily dominated the picture. She sat on Victoire's lap, and her green eyes stared directly at the camera as the Teddy in the photograph tried to get her attention by waving her stuffed parrot at her. "Where's this from?"

"Rose and Victoire brought over a bunch of photographs from their families and the Burrow. Vic wanted me to find some of us for the centerpieces, but…they've all got Lily in them."

"That's a problem," Harry took one from Teddy's hand and shook his head. Lily was clinging to Teddy's neck and glaring at Victoire as the girl tried to get Teddy's attention. It had always been like that – why hadn't they seen it?

"It wouldn't be, really, if Victoire weren't so upset at Lily for skipping the wedding."

"Are you okay with that?" Harry asked, putting the picture down and focusing on Teddy.

The man's face was a mask of concentration as he controlled his hair color, "Yeah. I mean, what does it matter? It's just a day, right?"

Harry shook his head, "You and Lily sure are alike in one way. You're both absolute rubbish at lying."

Teddy smiled sheepishly, "Fine, it bothers me. I mean, we're best friends, but she refuses to come to the wedding. It's weird."

Harry nodded, "It is weird. But she has her reasons."

"What'd she tell you? Because her reasons sounded like crap to me."

"They sound real to me. Think about it Teddy."

Teddy stared at him, "Why won't you just tell me?"

Harry wondered absently if Hermione had ever felt as frustrated with he and Ron as he did with his godson at that moment. Here Teddy was, sitting surrounded by evidence, by photographic declarations of Lily's love, and he couldn't see it. "Because you need to understand, Ted. She's your best friend. You should know her well enough to understand."

Teddy sighed and reached for the piles of pictures, "I'll think about it. I'd better tell Vic all the pictures make her look like she's a banshee or something. Thanks for stopping by, Harry."

"Like I said, just wanted to make sure you were okay. Come by whenever, all right?" He shook Teddy's hand before heading toward the fire, "And let me know if you need any help with the wedding, or anything."

Teddy nodded as Harry stepped into the green flames, "Sure thing. And thanks."

He dropped the photos on the coffee table before heading into his bedroom, but he kept one in his pocket, one that Harry hadn't seen because Teddy had slid it there long before his godfather arrived. It had somehow ended up in the pile that Rose had handed him at dinner that night – someone had taken it at Lily and Hugo's graduation party. Victoire wasn't in it, it was just him and Lily, right before dinner. They stood in the kitchen, and Lily was leaning against him, her face turned toward his so the camera had only caught her sheet of shimmering red hair, and his eyes were focused on her, his arm around her shoulders and his hand slowly drawing circles against the freckled skin of her arm. He hadn't known that anyone had seen them, that anyone had been taking pictures of them, but this one meant all the more to him because it showed how they were when they were together, just them. Or, how they had been together.

He fell asleep with that picture tucked beneath his pillow, and his dreams were full of fiery red hair and a deadly dangerous laugh and he woke up happy for the first time in a long, long while.

That evening, he Flooed over to the Potter's to find Al and James arguing on the couch in the living room. They cut off their conversation and stood to greet him, and Teddy eyed them suspiciously.

"Hey guys. What's going on?"

"Nothing." They both answered too quickly, but Harry and Ginny came in and announced that it was time for dinner, and Teddy didn't feel like pushing them. He'd find out eventually.

Teddy had spent a hell of a lot of his life at the Potter's, and over the past several years much of that time had been without Lily. But for some reason, maybe because he had been missing her, maybe because their last conversation had ended so badly, maybe because of the picture in his pocket, he felt out of place without her sitting beside him at the table.

"I'll be right back," he muttered as he pushed away from the table and headed to the upstairs bathroom. James and Al exchanged a look, and after a few minutes, Al stood up too and hurried upstairs. The door to Lily's room was open, and Teddy sat on the floor, in front of her dresser, holding Lily's charm bracelet in his hands.

"Teddy?" Al stepped inside, and Teddy jerked his head around to glance at him, an embarrassed flush coloring his cheeks.

"I just came in here to see if she left anything behind…you know, like she might plan on coming back some day. And then I saw this under her wardrobe. I gave it to her." He shook his head as Al knelt beside him, taking the bracelet from his suddenly shaking hands. "She said she wasn't angry with me."

Al couldn't believe Teddy's stupidity. Lily hadn't fooled him, that night that she told him and James that she wasn't leaving because of Teddy and Vic. She may have fooled James at first, but even he had figured it out after Lily refused to come back for the wedding.

But Al didn't say anything about Teddy's idiocy. Not yet. "You know Lily, she goes through mood-swings like crazy."

"Never with me."

Al shrugged, "James and I were planning on going out for drinks after dinner, and you look like you could use one. Want to come?"

Teddy hesitated before nodding. He followed Al silently from the room and barely spoke all through the rest of dinner. James and Al plied him with shots until he finally broke his silence in the vibrating heat of the bar. "I think I'm making a mistake."

"Thank Merlin." James crowed. "I thought you were never going to get there."

Al, who had only taken one shot and was now cradling a pint between two hands, sent James a look and asked, "What do you mean, Ted?"

"I mean, what was I thinking, you know?" He shook his head, his hair shifting colors so rapidly that Al couldn't keep track of them, "I'll tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking that I could keep Vic happy by proposing. I didn't think we'd actually get married." He spoke between gasps of desperate laughter, "Me, married? Can you even imagine? Merlin knows I fucking can't."

James laughed too, "I can't. You're the wrong type for marriage." He paused, a finger placed poetically on his chin, "Or you're wrong for marrying Victoire. She has a funny name."

"You're right! She does." Teddy nodded, "And I don't want to marry her. Because she's – she's…" He glanced at Al, "She's Victoire."

"Who do you want to marry?" Al almost wished that he was slightly drunker. These questions might be easier if he had some alcohol burning his veins.

"Nobody! Sing-Single life is better!" James jumped from his stool and grabbed onto one of the girls sitting next to them, trying to pull her onto the dance floor. She stuck her wand against his neck and muttered a stinging hex, and he jerked back.

Al grabbed him and pulled him to his other side, apologizing to the girl as he forced James to the seat and cast a quick sobering charm on him. "You're not helping," he muttered as he turned back to Teddy, who was staring moodily into his empty shot glass.

"Who do you want to marry?" Al repeated, and this time a more-sober James didn't interrupt.

"Not Vic. Not Vic." Teddy muttered. "Why'd I start dating her, anyway? Lily told me not to, you know. She was seven and she knew better than I did." Teddy sighed, "She always knows better than I do." He dropped a hand to his pocket and felt the sharp edge of the photograph through his jeans, "I miss Lily."

"We all do." Al said, sipping his beer.

"No, but I _really _miss her. This is gonna sound stupid, guys, but I think, I think I might like Lily more than I like Victoire."

"We all do," James said.

"No! No, you don't get it!" Teddy lowered his voice, so Al could barely hear him, "I think I might actually love Lily."

"Well, then. Maybe you should marry her." Al said, pushing some cash to the bartender. That was all he had wanted to know.

"And you should really break it off with Victoire," James added, for good measure.

"You are so right." Teddy grinned, "I'll break up with Victoire and I'll marry Lily and we'll live…what is it?" Al grabbed on to Teddy's arm and led him from the bar, "We'll live happily ever after."

And then he was home somehow and James was reminding him to break up with Victoire in the morning and Al was muttering something about him being a bloody fucking idiot and then he closed his eyes and he was dreaming and Lily was there.

The next morning Teddy decided that Albus and James Potter were both his least favorite and most favorite people, when he woke up with a blinding headache and rolled over to find hangover potion on his bed-stand. When he had gulped the acid green potion down, he saw a note scribbled in James's handwriting: "Break up with her."

He may not have remembered much of the night before, but he did remember that. He got to her flat so early that he didn't expect Vic to be awake. But she was sitting at her kitchen table, catalogues spread out in front of her, her hair piled haphazardly on her head and her eyes searching the pages as she flipped through them.

"Hey," She spoke without looking up, "Do you think James and Al would put up with having pink flowers for their boutonnieres?"

"Victoire," Teddy's voice was surprisingly steady. He had expected it to squeak out from between his shaking lips.

"Theodore," she turned to face him, smiling. He hated that he was going to be the one to tear that smile from her face. "What's up?"

He pulled out one of the chairs at her table, and a few magazines slid from it, hitting the floor in a smattering of pages. "I need to tell you something."

Victoire blinked, her face suddenly blank, cool, composed. "Did you cheat on me?" As if that was the worst thing that could possibly have happened.

"Merlin, Victoire, no. Of course not." Worse. A thousand times worse.

"Of course not," she let out a laugh. "I'm sorry, Teddy. I shouldn't have even thought that. I know you better than that." The smile fell back in place, "Well, what do you need to tell me?"

"I – I," he sighed, "I'm sorry. Bloody hell, Vic, I'm so sorry."

Her lips curled, her eyes meeting his, cloudy with fear, "No, Teddy. Don't – "

"It's not fair to you. I am not being fair to you by pretending that I'm ready to commit my life to us. Someday, maybe soon, maybe in twenty or thirty years, I'll leave you, and you'll have wasted forever on me."

Her blue eyes snapped to his, positively sparking with anger. She stood up, her tiny frame towering over him where he sat, and she leaned down, speaking fire into his face. "_You_ proposed to _me_. You said, Teddy, you said that you wanted me, forever and always. You said so. So excuse me if I don't understand. What the hell is this, cold feet?"

He shook his head, "No. Proposing to you was more cold feet – I mean, I was afraid of leaving you, because I do love you and because you're all I know – but I can't keep asking you to give yourself to me when I'll never be able to give everything to you." He worked through the explanation and her eyes narrowed and her hair seemed to expand as her hands reached out to grip his, her nails biting into his wrists. The magazines on the table began to rustle and he half-expected dishes to explode from the cupboards and shatter in the air as her magic slipped from her control.

"Why, Ted? Why can't you give everything? You say love me, but what is it that makes you so sure you can't be – be happy with me?" Her voice caught and fierce determination entered her eyes as she drove on, "What were the last eight years for?"

"I can't give you everything because I wouldn't be happy to get married all alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean."

"What?" Vic stepped back, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The wedding wasn't about me and you, Vic. It was about you. And when I proposed, I knew that it would be about you, and I figured that I'd be fine with that. But I'm not, because I _should_ feel like it's about us. Just us. But I don't feel that way. And the last eight years, they _were_ about us. And the future, it'll be about you – you and someone who deserves you more than I do, who'll love you more than I do, who'll make you a million times happier than I do."

"But you make me happy."

Teddy stood up slowly and placed his hands on Victoire's shoulders, "But you don't know, Victoire. You don't know what's out there for you, you don't know whether someone else could make you happier."

"No," Victoire jerked out of his grip. "I'm sorry, but no. No, I will not accept this. I will not let you end this."

Teddy had expected it to be hard. He had expected crying and screaming and flying dishes. He hadn't expected her to refuse, though. Hadn't expected her to put up a fight. "Vic, I am ending this."

"You haven't given me a real answer, though! Is there someone else?"

Could he say yes, could he tell her that he loved Lily? "Of course not. This is about you and me and the fact that I don't love you the way that I should."

She shook her head, "No. There is someone else. Otherwise you'd never have the balls to call it off. Otherwise you'd have fallen into marriage the way you've fallen into everything. There's always been someone else."

Teddy reached out as Victoire moved toward the fireplace, her hand already clutching a handful of Floo Powder. "What are you doing?"  
"Lily fucking Potter and I need to have a little chat."

Teddy shook his head, "What are you thinking? Lily's not – "

"She is, though. She's always been there for you. Always been this stupid, annoying, little, red haired thing between us. And I want to know what she did to make you do this, Teddy. Why the hell are you doing this?"

Victoire turned to face him and there were the tears, running down her face like tragic waterfalls, and she dropped to her knees, covering her face with her hands and smearing glittery green powder across her cheeks. "Vic," Teddy moved forward, ready to comfort her, but she shook her head.

"If we're done," she spoke through her sobs, "We're done. Just go."

And he did.

**A/N:** Because it's summer, the next (and last) chapter will be up sometime soonsoonsoon! And there'll be lots of Teddy/Lily scenes and happiness!

Please review, because I adore reviews, and reviews also make me write faster. So you really should review.  
xoxo


	4. four

**Disclaimer:** So, there's this totally awesome series of books that I don't own.

FOUR

When the girl and the boy

Decide that they don't need a happy ending,

They just need each other –

That's when fairytales happen.

"It's actually called a _hootenanny_? Really?" Lily stood in the crowded pub and stared at the sign hanging from the wall.

Sage sighed, "Not so loud, Lil. Do you want everyone to know that you're new to this?"

"But," Lily lowered her voice slightly, "A hootenanny, Sage? I mean, don't they want to be taken seriously?"

The blonde rolled her eyes, "People take them seriously because of their music. And hootenanny is a word."

Lily shook her head slightly and followed Sage into the smoke filled room, where two of Sage's friends from Salem would soon take the stage, along with the rest of their Irish folk band. When they had Flooed to tell her they'd be in the City on Thursday, Chase had fled the room with some excuse and Sage had begged and begged until Lily agreed to come. But from the way Sage was glaring at Lily, she could tell that the older girl was starting to wish she hadn't begged so hard for Lily's company.

"Sorry," Lily muttered, "I'll behave."

"You'd better, otherwise I'll get one of those lovely men to kick you out." Sage nodded toward the doorway, where three large, grizzly wizards twirled their thick wands and grimaced at the people hurrying past them.

Lily laughed, "That'd probably be overkill." She slid into a seat at a round table and Sage dropped beside her. Other people began sitting around them, and Lily waited expectantly as a group took the stage, a man with a guitar and harmonica and another with a concertina and a woman with a fiddle, and Lily felt herself relax, really relax, for the first time in weeks as the music swelled around her.

[x]

In his mind Teddy had left Victoire's and gone to America and shown up at Lily's door and twirled her around in a hug and pressed an electric kiss to her lips and…well his dreams went beyond all that. But it turns out that weddings and nearly decade-long relationships take longer than one conversation to undo. So he hadn't been able to get to the States that day, or the next. He had to go speak with Bill and Fleur and try to explain himself, and he was so thankful that the Potters and Ron's family and inexplicably, Percy and George were on his side, because otherwise he was certain that he would have been physically chucked out of the Potter-Weasley group. As it was, he was pretty sure that Bill would forgive him in about a million years and Fleur maybe a few billion after.

And then there was the issue of covering costs and making sure that Victoire was as okay as possible, and having many, _many_ conversations with Harry and Ginny. He didn't tell them everything, he didn't tell them about Lily, but he did tell them that he knew he didn't love Victoire.

They were surprisingly kind to him, so kind that he felt guilty about going to Lily and doing what he dreamed of doing with her, even the first stages of his dreams. So he waited a little longer, until James, Al and Rose and Scorpius cornered him and ordered him to the States.

And then when he arrived at Lily's door, he wasn't able to twirl her in a hug when she answered, because she didn't answer.

He stared in surprise at the man who had answered. It was amazing how easy it was for dreams to get derailed. This was just Chase, he reassured himself, just Lily's flat-mate, not a boyfriend. He hoped.

"Can I help you?"

"I was looking for Lily?"

"She's out." Definitely the flat-mate, then. Not a boyfriend, thank Merlin. "Who're you?"

Teddy shook himself, "Sorry. I'm Teddy, one of her friends from home."

"Of course." Chase stepped aside, "She'll be back in a while, do you want to come in and wait?"

"Could you tell me where to find her? It's kind of important."

Teddy stepped inside and turned to face Chase in the entranceway as the younger man slowly closed the door behind him and asked, "Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, everything's fine. I just really need to see her." Teddy fidgeted, one hand running through his messy hair and the other twirling his wand.

"About the wedding?" Sage had told Chase that today was the day Lily would get over whatever hang-ups she had and finally go out with someone, and even Chase could see that this man was the foremost hang-up in Lily's life. He wasn't in a hurry to completely ruin Sage's plans.

But Teddy shook his head, an apologetic look on his face, "No, that's over."

"Over as in you're not getting married?" Chase's mother would have murdered him for speaking so candidly to a stranger, but this was about Lily.

Teddy nodded, "I called off the wedding. I didn't love Victoire the way I should have." He wouldn't have told Chase the truth if he hadn't known that this younger man cared about Lily, that he had been there for her when Teddy hadn't. He certainly deserved some type of real explanation.

"Oh. I'm sorry."

Teddy shrugged, "Thanks. So, where's Lil?"

"Riot Pub. It's a wizarding building, so you can't take a cab there. Here," Chase snatched a map from the table by the door and pointed out Teddy's route, and Teddy left the apartment with one last nervous look at the door that could have revealed his easy salvation.

He followed Chase's directions to a building nestled between two skyscrapers, which Muggles passed without seeing and wizards rushed towards in groups, laughing and clutching at each other's hands in pre-happy-hour drunken joy.

Teddy stopped short when he saw red hair against the grungy concrete wall of the pub. He stood still in the crowd and stared as Lily – his Lily – threw her shining red hair back and laughed at something that someone else said.

There was a boy, a boy with dark black hair and a giving smile and eyes that wouldn't leave Lily's face as she laughed – eyes that drank in his Lily and asked for more from her than just a smile, just a laugh. Eyes that Teddy envied because they were so near her, because she was laughing for them.

He bit his tongue and watched as the boy brushed some of that fire away from her face and as she smiled – delightedly – up at that awful, horrible, age-appropriate American. Teddy's stomach twisted; he longed to go over there and tell that bastard to step away, to stop talking to her and making her laugh and – most importantly – to stop _looking_ because Lily was, and always had been, Teddy's. Teddy's to make laugh and to Teddy's to talk to and (especially) Teddy's to look at.

He longed to shove that arsehole's face against the concrete and tell him not to talk to that particular Potter, and ask him whether or not he knew all of Lily's secrets, the way Teddy did, if he knew that when she smiled she was probably hiding something, and that when she let her hair out of her ponytail it meant that she wanted to shield herself from the world, and that when she was seven she had proposed to Teddy and he had jokingly said yes.

But none of those thoughts, Teddy knew, were fair. It wasn't fair to begrudge that shaggy haired, skinny, kid his conversation with Lily. It wasn't fair to keep Lily away from all other guys, if she wanted to talk to them (and it sure as hell looked like she did), and it especially wasn't fair (at all) to consider Lily _his_. Because at one time he had chosen Victoire over her, because he had never told her he loved her like that, because he couldn't (shouldn't) even consider the fiery beauty someone who could even _be_ owned.

So instead of grabbing that bastard American, embarrassing himself and pissing her off, he turned and lost himself in the mass of people hurrying by the pub.

Lily thought she saw a familiar face in the crowd as she looked over Finn's shoulder, but when she looked again Teddy wasn't there. Just wishful thinking, of course. Besides, if it had been him he would have stopped to say something. So she turned her attention back to the dark haired man standing in front of her, trying so damn hard to coax a laugh out of her.

Finn was one of Sage's friends. She and the other one, Alice, had disappeared to the bathroom and left Lily and Finn waiting outside, acting as if Sage's plan wasn't entirely transparent. Lily was supposed to go out with this boy and get drunk with this boy and quite possibly have sex with this boy. But they were working tomorrow and besides, Lily was not over Teddy. And while Sage laughingly said, "It's not like Finn'll be looking for anything serious. You can just fuck him and leave him," Lily wasn't entirely comfortable with that idea. Especially since he had barely snogged anyone before, let alone had sex with anyone.

So when Finn asked, just before Sage and Alice joined them, "Want to get a drink, maybe some dessert?" Lily didn't answer the way Sage expected her to.

She smiled and shook her head, "Sorry, Finn, I'd love to, but I've got work tomorrow."

"Maybe tomorrow night? We'll be staying here for the weekend, we're playing again on Saturday."

Lily nodded slowly, "Yeah, tomorrow." After all, if she wanted to chicken out, she could do it later, and Sage wouldn't be as angry at her.

"Great!" His grin was almost enough to convince Lily that tomorrow might be a good idea. Hadn't she come to New York to get over Teddy? Maybe moving on physically (or moving physically _at all_) would help.

"Hey guys," Sage swung an arm around Lily's shoulder and smiled up at Finn, "We going out?"

"Tomorrow night," Lily answered, "We're working tomorrow, remember?"

"Oh, Lily," Sage groaned, "You need to stop being such a workaholic. I mean, really."

"It's fine," Finn cut in, "Alice and I have been travelling all day. Tomorrow will be more fun. And you can bring your boyfriend along."

"Yeah," brown haired Alice squealed, "I want to meet the boy who finally tamed the wild witch of Salem."

Sage rolled her eyes, "I'm not tame."

"No, no, of course not," Finn nodded mockingly, then turned to Alice. "You ready?"

"Yup." She smiled at Lily and Sage, "Good to see both of you. We'll Floo tomorrow for details?"  
"Absolutely," Lily waved as she and Sage drifted back into the entrance of the pub and apparated back to their apartment.

"Hey!" Chase was sprawled on the couch, a thick book open in front of him. "I didn't think you'd be back so soon."

Sage dropped beside him and Lily fell down into the armchair, "Lily shot Finn down."

"Did not," Lily covered a yawn with her freckled hand, "I just thought that we'd have more fun if we went out tomorrow."

"Or we could have gone out both nights, and then you could have actually gotten to know him."

"I thought I was supposed to 'fuck him and leave him.' Does that really mean that I have to talk to him too?"

Sage sighed as Chase sat up, his eyes intent on Lily's face, "I was _joking_, Lily. Finn _is_ the relationship type, I just didn't want to scare you off before you met him."

"Wait," Chase interrupted Lily's attempt at a retort, "Didn't Teddy find you?"

Lily stared at him for a silent moment, "Teddy?"

"Yeah," Chase glanced from Lily's shocked expression to Sage's angry one, "I'm guessing he didn't. He came here looking for you, so I sent him to the Pub."

"I thought I saw – but…" Lily shook her head distractedly, "Did he say what he wanted?"

Chase shrugged, wondering how much of the news he should share with Lily. He decided it'd be better to let Teddy tell the whole story, all at once. "Not really. Just said he wanted to talk to you."

"Weird." Sage transferred her angry glare from Chase's face to Lily's, "You're still coming out with us tomorrow."

"Sure," Lily stood, "but I'd better go find Teddy. He's not used to cities."

"He'll probably show up here eventually," Chase said, after Sage jabbed him angrily in the ribs, "It might be best if you wait for him."

"Yeah, maybe." Lily moved toward the doorway, clearly not paying any attention to Chase, and Sage muttered angry words under her breath about stubborn, clueless, meddling bastards. Chase tried not to take offense.

"Really, Lily," Sage began, but someone knocked at the door and Lily opened it immediately, expecting to see Teddy. Sage and Chase exchanged hopeful looks, which quickly fell into near-horror when Lily said in surprise, "Victoire?"

The blonde blew into the living room and glanced at Sage and Chase with disdain as they both stood. Lily shrugged at them and Chase wished that he had told her that the wedding had been called off. From the look on Victoire's face Lily could have used a little preparation.

"Vic, these are my flat-mates, Chase and Sage. Guys, this is my cousin Victoire."

"Nice to meet you," Sage stepped forward, extending a hand, which Victoire shook briskly. Chase followed his girlfriend's example, although his attempt at a smile left his face twisted in more of a grimace.

Victoire turned her full attention on Lily, "Can we talk somewhere in private?"

Lily blinked in surprise, but Chase stepped forward, "Yeah, Sage and I were just going to go out for coffee. We'll be back in a couple of hours. Do you want anything from Dunkin', Lil?"

Lily shook her head and Sage followed Chase slowly out into the hallway, where he briskly told her what Teddy had said.

"We're not really going for coffee, right?" Sage asked, glancing nervously at the closed door. "That bitch might murder Lily."

Teddy shook his head, "No. We can wait in the lobby for her to leave, and then we can run up and make sure Lil's still alive."

"Right." Sage took one last look at the apartment before leading the way down the hall toward the elevator. She almost thought she could hear angry shouting through the door.

But she couldn't have, because Victoire and Lily were both silent.

They stood in the center of Lily's living room, Victoire's blue eyes critically sweeping Lily's freckled face, her messy red hair and her hesitant smile. Lily stared back evenly, trying to keep control over her expression.

"Want to sit down, Vic?"

She shook her head, graceful sheets of straight blonde hair sweeping across her shoulders. "I expect you know."

Lily sighed, "Know what?"

"Really? You're really going to play dumb?" Victoire's face abruptly turned livid, her blue eyes flashed sparks at her younger cousin.

Lily spoke levelly, "I really don't know what you're talking about."

"I thought your family would have told you the minute it happened," Victoire laughed harshly, "Hell, I half thought I'd find you and him fucking when I got here."

Lily had never, not once, heard Victoire swear. "Vic, is everything okay? No one told me anything – I haven't even heard from anyone all week." She swallowed, "Do you need me to do anything?"

"No," Victoire radiated anger, "No, you do not get to be nice, Lily Potter. You do not get to act as if you're innocent in all this. Because you are far from innocent."

Lily stared at her, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You're a whore, Lily Potter. A little – pesky – whore who just couldn't leave well enough alone. Teddy broke up with me." She stopped for a moment, inhaling a mouthful of air and letting it out in a rush of anger, "Teddy broke up with me. And I blame you."

Lily struggled to keep her face impassive, as her heart thrilled and fell simultaneously. She shook her head slowly, "Vic, I'm sorry. But what did I have to do with it? I haven't spoken to Teddy in weeks."

"That's just it. You always talk to Teddy. You were always there, and he was always happy to be with me. But all of a sudden you run away – and don't look at me like that, that's what it was. You left right after we announced our engagement, and all of a sudden Teddy wasn't there for me either." She shook her head, "He was distracted and he never wanted to talk about you and I thought you had a row but then," her laugh was humorless, "then he shows up at my apartment and tells me that he doesn't love me."

"Vic, I'm so – "

But Victoire didn't let Lily speak, "He _doesn't love me_, Potter. We'd been dating for eight years, and he just now figured this out? Just before we were about to get married. And you know what I figured out? I figured out that you had always been there, there for him to talk to. And all of a sudden you're gone, and all of a sudden he realizes that he doesn't love me. So obviously there's a connection."

"Victoire, I don't know – "

"You don't get to talk, Potter. I want you to understand that you're responsible. You. Because you decided that you couldn't handle being around us, or because you realized that you loved him. Or just because you're selfish. I haven't figured it out yet. But I do know that it's your fault. That Teddy would never have left me if you had just stayed where you belonged."

Lily blinked, and felt her fingers curl very slowly around her wand, "You don't get to come here and tell me this, Victoire. You don't get to come to the states, to come into my _home_ and tell me that – "

"Oh, but I do. I do get to, because you destroyed my future. I wish that you had never been born, Potter. And so I get to do whatever the hell I want."

Lily's wand was out before she had even really thought about it. "I get that you're hurting, and I'm truly sorry. But you are wrong in thinking that I had anything to do with it, wrong in thinking that you have the right to come here and tell me that you wish I wasn't alive."

"Oh, you're sorry. Sorry? That's your catch-phrase, it doesn't mean a thing. And, and…" she shook her head again and her eyes caught sight of Lily's wand, gripped in the girl's hand, "Are you going to curse me?"

"No." Lily's fingers were steady on her wand, "But you should probably leave."

"Oh, but I came all this way just to see you!" Victoire smiled cruelly.

"You came all this way to punish me for something I had no part in. Go."

She sighed, "What don't you understand? You know what he said, Lily? When he was explaining himself? He said that he wouldn't be happy to get married alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Which just screams Lily Potter, to me."

Lily hadn't thought that any of that conversation had stuck with Teddy, but she managed to keep her expression unsurprised, "Look, Vic, eventually you'll be glad that he broke up with you. Eventually you'll be happy that you're not stuck in a loveless marriage."

"You're not denying it." The girl was glowing with bright, brilliant anger, and the books spread across the living room were shuffling pages, creating a whispered background for their heated voices, "But you know, it wouldn't have been a loveless marriage. I loved him. I _love_ him enough for the both of us. He's always been mine, my Prince Charming, but then you had to go and be your fucking self."

"Vic," Lily began moving toward the apartment door, trying to herd her cousin out. "I think that you should go. Maybe take some time away from it all, and you'll find someone better for you."

"You're not listening. Of course you're not, because you don't care. Teddy was _it_." Victoire stood in the hallway, glaring at Lily, "All I wanted."

Lily led Victoire toward the elevator and shuttled her inside, praying that they would make it to the lobby, that Victoire would leave and go to the International Travel department without pulling her wand, praying that the rest of her family didn't feel the same way, but praying most-of-all that Victoire was right, in a way. That Teddy had broken up with her because of how he felt about Lily. And okay, maybe that meant she was selfish. But at least she wasn't the one who had Flooed across an ocean to attack her cousin.

They came out into the lobby and Victoire whirled, "I'm leaving. But understand this, Lily Potter. You are a bitch. You are a bitch and a whore and you will never, _ever_ come near me again." She shot one last glare over her shoulder, hissing words coated in venom, "I hope you get nothing that you want out of life. I hope your happiness is stolen from you the way you stole mine." And she was gone, and Lily could feel the entire lobby focused on her.

She turned away, her back straight, her eyes focused on the bank of elevators, willing herself not to break down, praying that she could keep the tears inside, at least, _at the very least_, until she was safe in her room. But she didn't make it to the elevators, because two pairs of arms clutched her tightly and she dropped her head against Chase's shoulder as Sage whispered softly, "It's okay, Lily. It'll be all right."

Lily inhaled as she felt another hand, one unbearable touch enter the hug, smoothing hair away from her forehead and she pulled away from all three of them, turned to see Teddy standing there, looking gorgeous and apologetic and _there._

She didn't say anything. She just stared at him, stared and stared as if he might maybe disappear on her. He didn't speak, either, and Chase and Sage moved away, toward the exits.

"Maybe you could have warned me about that earlier?" Lily asked, her voice shaking as it escaped her trembling lips.

Teddy sighed. "Can we go somewhere…more private, Lil? This might take a while."

Lily nodded, not speaking as she led the way toward the elevators, back toward her apartment, hoping that this encounter would go better than the last.

She sat down on the floor with her back against the armchair and waved Teddy to sit down on the sofa, but he began pacing in front of her, his feet beating against the hardwood. "No one told you, before Victoire showed up?"

Lily shook her head, "No, I haven't heard from anyone since Dad came last weekend."

"Harry came here?" Teddy stopped pacing in surprise. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah. He wanted to try and convince me to come to the wedding. I think the boys and Victoire got him to come. But I had no idea that you had ended it."

"It only happened Monday. I guess everyone thought that I should be the one to tell you, but I didn't get the chance to get away until today. And apparently Victoire…" He trailed off, unable to find a word to describe her reaction. "I'm sorry, Lil."

"Did you come by the pub?" Lily asked, picking distractedly at a spare thread in her jeans, "I thought I saw you there."

Teddy's face colored, "I didn't want to interrupt you."

"Oh," Lily refused to make this easy on him. If he was jealous of Finn, which he seemed to be, he'd have to explain himself fully.

"Who was he?" He began pacing again, one hand stuck in his pocket and the other running through his multicolored hair.

"A friend. He was playing in one of the bands at the Pub."

"A friend?" Teddy repeated, "How close a friend?"

Lily raised an eyebrow, "What does it matter to you?" He didn't deserve easy.

"It doesn't." His response came too quickly. "It doesn't matter at all. I was just curious – it looked like you were getting along."

Lily shrugged, "I guess. He's a nice guy."

"Just nice?"

"Why do you care, Ted?" Lily sighed, examining the hole that she had made in the knee of her jeans. "You should be happy that I've got a nice guy."

"You've _got_ a nice guy? You're dating him?" Teddy asked in a strained voice.

"I could be."

"Lily," Teddy groaned, "Will you please give me a straight answer?"

But she shook her head, "No, because you're acting silly and because I've just been put through the wringer by Victoire and because you waited to tell me about your break-up."

"You're driving me crazy," he muttered, finally dropping to the ground and leaning against the couch, stretching out his legs so his scuffed sneakers nearly brushed Lily's bright pink toenails.

"Fine. Tell me one truth and I'll tell you about me and Finn."

Teddy sighed. "What do you want to know first?"

"What made you decide to break up with Victoire?"

He should have been expecting her to ask the toughest question first. But he didn't have to tell the whole truth. She'd be interested enough by her family's part in their breakup to disregard his half-arsed attempt at answering the question. "What you said, the last time I Flooed you, about how I should feel about Victoire got me thinking. And then your dad said something recently that made me wonder whether I was doing the right thing. And Al and James took me out drinking on Sunday and I realized that I really didn't love her."

"So she was right," Lily dropped her head into her hands, "It was my fault." Because her father would never have gone to Teddy if Lily hadn't confessed her love to him, and _of course_ her brothers hadn't believed her when she told them that she felt nothing more than friendship for Teddy. Teddy hadn't called it off because of how _he_ felt about her, but because of her bloody family's attempts to protect her.

"It wasn't," Teddy said. "Not really, because I never should have proposed to her in the first place. Your dad kept asking me if I was sure, if I was ready, and I kept lying to him and to myself, saying that I was. But I wasn't, not for Vic." They sat in silence for a moment or two, Lily slowly shaking her head. "What about this guy, Finn?"

Lily laughed, "Merlin, Teddy, you'd think you caught us snogging or something."

Teddy flushed bright red, "You're not snogging him, are you?"

"No," Lily sighed, "I just met him tonight. He's one of Sage's friends from school, and she wanted to introduce us. She keeps wanting to set me up with people."

"But she hasn't?"

Lily shrugged, "She's tried. But I don't really like any of them all that much." Because she compared all of them to him, and each one was flawed in some way that Teddy wasn't.

"Oh." He shrugged, "I'm sorry."

"You're not."

"No," Teddy shook his head, "You're right. I'm not happy that you're alone, but I'm glad you're not with anyone. If that makes sense."

It only made sense if Teddy felt anything for her other than friendship. Which was impossible, so she shook her head, "Not really."

Teddy inhaled sharply. He had to do it – she wasn't going to guess. "Do you remember, when I Flooed, and you asked me whether I was happy?"

Lily nodded. Of course she did.

"Did you believe me?"

Honestly, if she pushed aside all her own self-doubt and stupid lack of confidence? "No."

"Why not?"

What the hell kind of question was that? Wasn't he supposed to be the one answering _her_ questions, not the other way around? But he kept his eyes, which hovered somewhere between dazzling gray and storm blue, focused on hers and he begged her to answer, so she did. "Because I know you, Ted, and there was something about the way you looked at me that told me that you weren't happy."

"But you acted like you believed me."

"Of course I did. Of course, because if you wanted to marry her, then nothing I did would have stopped you. You had to realize, yourself, that you didn't actually want her."

"You could have said something," Teddy argued, "Instead of just letting me go."

"I tried, Ted. You said yourself that I got you thinking."

"But all this would have been over ages ago if you had something straight out. Did you ever think Vic and I were right for each other?"

Lily shook her head slowly, "No. I never did."

Teddy gripped his dark hair with shaking hands, "You always acted like you were fine with it."

"Merlin, Teddy!" Lily slammed her small hand flat against the floor, "Take responsibility, for once. You thought you loved Victoire, so _you_ stayed with her, and all of a sudden you realized _you_ didn't love her anymore, or you never had, or whatever, so you left her. And that was the right thing to do. Stop trying to figure out where it all went wrong, because I guarantee there was never a single moment. I never wanted you with her, but that does not mean that you were never good together."

Teddy blinked in surprise. He had seen Lily angry many, many times, but never quite like this. Never like this, and never at him. It was as if she was entirely fed up with it all. With him. "Sorry."

She shrugged, "Now, did you come here to tell me something? Or did you just want me to tell you that you should have realized when you were eighteen that you could never be with Vic? Because if that's the case, I think you should probably leave."

"No, no, Lil. I came to tell you something. Something more than just that Vic and I broke up."

"Good," she pushed some hair over her shoulder and fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist – where her charm bracelet had been for all those years.

"I came to tell you…When your dad came to talk to me, he told me to think about why you wouldn't come to the wedding." Lily bit back an angry hiss as she felt her skin turn bright red, but Teddy didn't stop talking. "Really think about it. I knew your reasons made no sense to me, but I figured they must have to him." He shifted uncomfortably, "But then I went to your place for dinner and I found your charm bracelet under your wardrobe. I didn't think you were really mad at me, Lil. But you had clearly been pissed at me when you left…and I realized then how much I _cared_ that you weren't going to be there. And that's when I started thinking about it…" He closed his eyes for a moment. "I wanted this to be easy," he muttered, falling silent.

"What did you think was going to happen?" Lily asked, a sardonic smile on her lips. "I'd be able to read your mind?"

"That really would help. Any chance you've worked out a Charm for that?" Lily shook her head, and Teddy sighed, "Time for me to man up, then."

"I'd say." Lily stilled her nervous movements and stared at him, "Come on, Ted. It's not like I'll kick you out or curse you or anything."

"You might." He sighed, "Okay. I started thinking about how it wasn't Victoire that I was excited about seeing at my wedding. I wanted you there because without you the day would have meant next-to-nothing. I wasn't happy that I was marrying Vic, but at first I was happy that you'd be coming home for the wedding. And then it was all I could think about, having you there like you always had been. I wasn't thinking about how Vic would look in her wedding dress, I was thinking how you would look in your bridesmaid dress. I was wondering whether your smile would be real or if it would be the one that you put on for show, I was thinking about whether you'd dance with me or if you'd avoid me all night. I was dreading that you'd bring an American back as your date, and I was praying that you'd be sick of this place and want to move back home, because I couldn't imagine my life – especially if I was married to Victoire – without you to talk to all the time." Teddy bit his lip, ready to finish his confession, "And then your brothers, who're awesome, by the way, made me really realize that I had to break it off with Vic. I was being selfish. It wasn't fair to her that I would have married her, when emotionally…" he raised hopeful eyes to Lily's own, "Emotionally I've always been yours."

Lily stopped breathing. "You're telling me that – "

"I love you, Lily Potter."

Lily's lips curved into a real smile and she threw herself across the floor, landing in Teddy's lap as she sighed, "I love you too," against his collarbone.

He pressed one finger under her chin and tilted her face up, then leaned down and captured her smile on his lips.

It wasn't like her dreams, but he was there, and his lips were sending electric thrills through her body and he had told her he _loved_ her, and who needs perfect dreams when you've found joy in the imperfect reality?

[x]

Scorpius and Rose were sitting in James's kitchen as Al and James argued loudly over whether frozen sausages tasted better heated in the microwave or sizzled on the stove when Lily's owl arrived. Rose snatched the letter from his leg with anxious fingers and unfurled the parchment across the table. She read aloud, "_Thank you all. We'll be back, eventually. Love, Lily and Teddy._" Rose squealed and threw her arms around Scorpius as James and Al slapped each other's backs.

"They're finally together," Rose laughed.

The boys echoed, "Finally."

-FIN-

**A/N: **I hope hope hope that that didn't disappoint anyone. I'm having issues writing endings lately.

Thanks for reading, and I _adore_ reviews and reviewers!


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